Oleksiy Kliuiev has had to get used to working under fire. He leads a group of volunteers helping civilians caught in the fighting on Ukraine’s frontline.
Last September, he and his team were nearly hit in a drone strike as they rushed to help residents under bombardment in the Sumy region, close to Ukraine’s north-eastern border with Russia.
“By the time we volunteers arrived, there had already been two hits on the hospital by Shahed drones,” Mr Kliuiev, who filmed the strike, tells Sky News.
With the air-raid warning still sounding, he sought shelter in a neighbouring building.
“When we came out, we saw a horrible picture. There were bodies everywhere – wounded or killed. Cars were on fire. Everything was burning.”
A total of 11 people were killed in the attack.
Mr Kliuiev has been working on the frontline of Ukraine’s war since 2022.
In recent days, this border region has become the focal point of Russia’s war effort, as the Kremlin tries to take control and cut off supplies to the Ukrainian military.
Under Russian assault, support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) had been more essential than ever.
“Sumy is under shelling all the time. It’s under attack from drones, from ballistic missiles, from supersonic missiles,” Mr Kliuiev says.
“It is probably the hardest moment since 2022, because even back in 2022, when we had convoys of occupiers marching through our city, the scale of destruction was not what we are seeing now.”
Mr Kliuiev heads up the Sumy branch of Dobrobat, a volunteer organisation that helps civilians and does urgent reconstruction in areas hit by Russian shelling.
He and his team are aware of the risks. “Ours is a rescue mission,” he says. “So, every time we go to such scenes, we go to help people.”
Last year, Dobrobat received 2 million Ukrainian hryvnia, worth around £38,000, from USAID towards building repair projects. It was supposed to be the first in a series of ongoing payments.
Instead, USAID’s funding was frozen by US President Donald Trump on his first day in office.
Mr Kliuiev sent Sky News a video he took this week of apartment blocks in Sumy, with boarded-up windows that his group had planned to replace using USAID funding.
On Monday, Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said in a statement on X that 83% of contracts funded by USAID would be cancelled.
In a war where equipment like drones and tanks are talked about most, unassuming items are also essential – ladders, construction foam and tools for repairing the damage.
The aid freeze has had an immediate impact on Dobrobat’s work.
“We haven’t been able to install window units as quickly. Residents have been living through a very harsh winter with temperatures of 15C below freezing,” Mr Kliuiev says.
USAID provided billions worldwide
USAID gave $32bn in aid to 165 countries in 2024. Ukraine was by far the top recipient country, receiving $5.4bn.
Mr Kliuiev is one of thousands of Ukrainians working on projects funded by USAID near the frontlines, many of whom have spoken to Sky News.
“Unfortunately, due to the suspension of USAID funding, more than half of our projects were stopped,” says Yuriy Antoshchuk, co-founder of Unity Foundation, a group working to rebuild communities in Kherson.
“The population’s faith in the fact that there is a reliable partner who is not only ready to help resist Russian aggression, but also will support in the restoration and help rebuild a democratic society, is fading every day.”
The impact of the cuts on the ground is immense but programme organisers have been working in a state of confusion too.
They are having to untangle a complicated web of projects affecting many different areas of work in Ukraine, from subsidising school employee salaries to assisting internally displaced people.
“I am in the process of terminating nearly 100 staff. People who have worked tirelessly to serve the frontlines of Russia’s war against Ukraine,” a senior American aid worker in Ukraine, whose work was funded by USAID, tells Sky News.
“I never thought I would see the day when the American government would be both reckless and dishonest at this magnitude.
“The shame I feel as an American is completely overwhelming.”
Job losses
According to an analysis by Molly Consultants, a global health consultancy tracking aid job losses, over 14,000 Americans have been made redundant so far. They expect that number to rise to 52,000.
Almost 60,000 non-Americans have also lost their jobs, with the figure expected to rise to more than 100,000.
Most USAID funding is managed through a series of US-based intermediary companies. Since 2005, a quarter has gone via one firm, Chemonics.
It is now one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the US government, seeking payment for outstanding work that has already been done. In an initial court filing, the company said it was owed $110.3m in outstanding invoices for work performed in 2024.
A judge had ordered the invoices to be paid by 10 March, but a source familiar with USAID’s programmes told Sky News only a small fraction of this had been given to Chemonics before the deadline – about $6m.
Sky News asked the State Department when it planned to pay, but it declined to comment on the ongoing legal dispute.
Without funding from USAID, Chemonics is unable to pay local contractors and staff. The company has taken drastic cost-cutting measures, including laying off many of their staff both in the US and abroad, the source familiar with USAID’s programmes told Sky News.
Chemonics received the most USAID funding for Ukraine contracts.
Ropack, an equipment company in Odessa, is one of the vendors owed money.
“Since 2022, despite fear, panic, and uncertainty, we have kept working because we knew if we stopped, factories that cannot afford to stop would grind to a halt,” said Oksana Chumachenko, the company’s director, in a letter to Sky News.
“We keep going even when Shahed drones rain down at night, and in the morning – if we are lucky and another substation has not been bombed – we drink our coffee, thank God we are still alive, and get back to work.
“But sometimes, we hit a dead end.” Now, with USAID money coming to a halt, “today is one of those days,” she says.
“We fully acknowledge that this is a sovereign decision by the US administration, and we do not question it. But we ask – we plead – that commitments already made under existing contracts be fulfilled.”
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The frustration was also palpable in an interview Sky News conducted with a senior American aid worker in Ukraine, who spoke under the condition of anonymity.
“You do not stop paying your bills because you don’t like what the person before you approved,” they said.
“I have vendors who have not been paid for generators they delivered and installed so frontline communities in Ukraine have access to water, light, and heat.
“These suppliers are going to need to go back to these communities and remove this lifesaving equipment – take it back – because a few decision makers in [Washington] DC did not spend the time or energy to understand the whole picture.”
Andrew Mitchell, a former foreign office minister, says the impact of the USAID cuts is wide-ranging.
“If you want to tackle things like migration, climate change, pandemics, you need to do it on an international basis,” he says.
“If you have a situation like you have today in Ukraine, the scale of human needs, the scale of humanitarian resource and help that is required is immense,” he adds.
“I’m afraid the result of these cuts will be going backwards and not forwards in the way that we had hoped.”
Back in Sumy, USAID cuts have delivered a significant hit to Mr Kliuiev’s operations. But he says this is not the end for Dobrobat.
“We will continue our work because we’ve been around since 2022. But the support from USAID was a step forward for us that now won’t happen.”
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The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open-source information. Through multimedia storytelling, we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
