As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine enters its fifth year, conditions in southern Ukraine have rapidly deteriorated. Maintaining humanitarian operations has become an increasingly complex balancing act between enabling aid delivery and managing risk.
For Olga Scripovscaia, a field security coordination officer based in Odesa, each day starts with the same question: “what changed overnight?”
After nights frequently interrupted by air alerts and coordinated attacks, mornings are spent reviewing incident reports, checking updates from local authorities and monitoring conditions across Odesa, Mykolaiv and Kherson, areas where humanitarian access can change within hours.
“There is always something ongoing here,” she said. “Things are never quiet.”
‘A road that is usable today may not exist tomorrow’
Ms. Scripovscaia works across all UN agencies operating in southern Ukraine, helping assess whether missions can proceed safely and advising on movement plans, operational concepts and contingency measures.
Her team monitors security conditions around the clock, producing flash reports after incidents and conducting personnel headcounts whenever attacks occur.
“A road that is usable today may not exist tomorrow,” she explained.
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Conditions on the ground continue to evolve. According to Ms. Scripovscaia, increasingly sophisticated threats, including mines and highly precise drones, require constant reassessment of routes and operational procedures.
If missions are planned in areas where conditions have recently deteriorated, teams may need to reroute or delay deployments entirely.
‘You see tears. You see emotions’
Coming from a military background, she says structure remains essential to managing the volume of information and decisions that flow through security operations.
Yet she believes her experience as a woman in the field shapes how she approaches the work.
“Being a woman, maybe you see more than protocol,” she said. “You see tears. You see emotions. You see things beyond procedures.” That perspective, she explained, becomes especially important before missions into difficult environments.
© Courtesy Olga Scripovaisa
Olga Scripovaisa (left) Field Security Coordination Officer, talks to colleagues while working in the field in southern Ukraine.
Alongside formal security briefings, she pays attention to how colleagues are feeling, asking whether they feel prepared, whether they understand the risks and whether they need more information before deployment.
When security and humanitarian needs collide
Among the most difficult parts of the job, Ms. Scripovscaia says, is supporting humanitarian access into locations where people urgently need assistance, but conditions remain dangerous.
She described a recurring dilemma: balancing professional responsibility with humanitarian need.
Humanitarian agencies sometimes seek access to locations where risks remain extremely high and where local support networks may no longer exist.
For security teams, those decisions are rarely straightforward.
“Protocol gives me maybe 75 per cent of the reason to say no,” she said. “But I still keep 25 per cent in my heart for those people.”
Finding another way
When missions cannot proceed, she says, the conversation does not end there.
Instead, the focus shifts to finding another way, whether it’s through changing routes, reassessing conditions or identifying a future window for access.
For her, that persistence reflects the purpose of security work in humanitarian settings. “If today is not possible,” she said, “we are already thinking about how to make it possible tomorrow.”
