Valerii and his wife live in the village in Donetsk region. Their children are already grown up and live separately. Valerii is a pensioner now but before he worked for 40 years at a local mine. Shortly before the start of the full-scale invasion, the family moved into a new house, which they built for a long time themselves.

There is no gas in the village, and local people are in a great need for solid fuel, in particular firewood. Local forestry cannot cope with the existing demand: part of the forest is damaged by fires caused by hostilities, and many trees contain metal fragments. As a result of constant shelling, the forest areas are contaminated with the remnants of unexploded shells, mines and other explosive objects, which makes almost all areas of the forest potentially deadly.

When Valerii learned about the opportunity to receive solid fuel, he was very happy. “I did not expect that they would bring it. We had some coal for heating, but it was of low quality and burned poorly. In addition, a lot of soot was produced. It is much better to use firewood to heat the house, it will last me a long time," says the pensioner, who received this type of assistance for the first time.

Estonian Refugee Council in Ukraine with their local partner NGO YES provided him 7.51 storage meters of chopped firewood. The programme is implemented with funding from the Ukraine Humanitarian Fund managed by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA).