The UN is considering moving humanitarian supplies into underground facilities after strikes hit 10 of its warehouses in Ukraine this year and destroyed millions of dollars' worth of aid, UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Ukraine Matthias Schmale said on 15 September.

Repeated strikes on aid warehouses have forced the UN to rethink how it stores and buys supplies in Ukraine, including moving them underground. More of the humanitarian budget now goes to protecting aid rather than delivering it.

"These deliberate attacks on warehousing capacities … is a new trend of the last few months," Schmale told Reuters after briefing states in Geneva.

Strikes destroyed medical supplies, food, and generators worth millions across Ukraine

On 3 September, an air attack destroyed a major medical-supplies warehouse in the Kyiv region. The attack came after two other medical-supply warehouses were destroyed in the previous three months, including a double strike in Dnipro in late August that wiped out half the supplies earmarked for some 225,000 people in frontline and hard-to-reach areas.

In July, a strike on a warehouse near Kyiv destroyed nearly $3.9 million in UNICEF supplies, including power generators, water supplies, and hygiene kits. In May, an Iskander missile strike on a World Food Programme warehouse in Dnipro destroyed food meant for around 130,000 people.

Added security costs strain an already underfunded aid operation

Schmale said the UN is now weighing whether to store supplies underground rather than in conventional warehouses, and is delaying some purchases while it works out how to protect what it buys. The added security costs come on top of an already strained budget: the UN's 2026 humanitarian appeal for Ukraine seeks $2.3 billion to reach 4.1 million people.