GENEVA: More than 14,000 people have been displaced in recent days from Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region, where Russia launched a ground offensive on May 10, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.
The assault has seen Russian forces achieve their largest territorial gains in Ukraine in the last 18 months.
“Over the past two weeks, fighting in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine has severely escalated,” Jarno Habicht, the WHO’s representative in Ukraine, told a press briefing in Geneva, via video-link from Kyiv.
“Over 14,000 people have been displaced in a matter of days, and nearly 189,000 more still reside within 25 kilometers of the border with the Russian Federation, facing significant risks due to the ongoing fighting,” he said.
He said the UN health agency was using these figures after speaking with local authorities.
“With the worsening security situation, humanitarian needs in the region are growing, and growing fast,” Habicht said.
The conflict in Kharkiv “has significantly increased the number of trauma patients,” he added.
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Since then, more than 20,000 amputations have been carried out, said Habicht.
And 200 ambulances per year, on average, have been damaged or destroyed in shelling attacks, “depriving the Ukrainian people of urgent care,” he added.
The UNHCR voiced concerns that conditions in Kharkiv — already home to 200,000 internally displaced people — could become even more difficult if the ground assault and aerial attacks continue.
“UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, is extremely worried about the worsening situation and resulting spike in humanitarian needs and forced displacement owing to the new ground offensive,” spokeswoman Shabia Mantoo told the Geneva briefing.
She said the Ukrainian authorities had evacuated more than 10,300 people from villages in the Kharkiv region’s border areas, while others have left by their own means.
“The majority of the evacuees, who had to escape their homes with only a few belongings, are already highly vulnerable and include mainly older people and those with low mobility or disabilities who were not able to flee earlier,” Mantoo said.
Those registered at a transit center in Kharkiv city have been given basic relief items and advised on accommodation options.
“The vast majority of evacuees have expressed a clear wish to stay with family members or in rental accommodation and collective sites in Kharkiv and not move further from their homes, to be able to return when the situation allows,” Mantoo said.
The United Nations’ 2024 humanitarian plan for Ukraine amounts to $3.1 billion this year. UN spokeswoman Alessandra Vellucci said that it was thus far only 23 percent funded.
More than 14,000 displaced from Ukraine’s Kharkiv region: WHO
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More than 14,000 displaced from Ukraine’s Kharkiv region: WHO
- WHO official in Ukraine: Conflict in Kharkiv ‘has significantly increased the number of trauma patients’
- UNHCR voices concerns that conditions in Kharkiv could become even more difficult if the ground assault and aerial attacks continue
2025 among world’s three hottest years on record, WMO says
- All eight datasets confirmed that the last three years were the planet’s three hottest since records began, the WMO said
- The slight differences in the datasets’ rankings reflect their different methodologies and types of measurements
BRUSSELS: Last year was among the planet’s three warmest on record, the World Meteorological Organization said on Wednesday, as EU scientists also confirmed average temperatures have now exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming for the longest since records began.
The WMO, which consolidates eight climate datasets from around the world, said six of them — including the European Union’s European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and the British national weather service — had ranked 2025 as the third warmest, while two placed it as the second warmest in the 176-year record.
All eight datasets confirmed that the last three years were the planet’s three hottest since records began, the WMO said. The warmest year on record was 2024.
THREE-YEAR PERIOD ABOVE 1.5 C AVERAGE WARMING LEVEL
The slight differences in the datasets’ rankings reflect their different methodologies and types of measurements — which include satellite data and readings from weather stations.
ECMWF said 2025 also rounded out the first three-year period in which the average global temperature was 1.5 C above the pre-industrial era — the limit beyond which scientists expect global warming will unleash severe impacts, some of them irreversible.
“1.5 C is not a cliff edge. However, we know that every fraction of a degree matters, particularly for worsening extreme weather events,” said Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at ECMWF.
Burgess said she expected 2026 to be among the planet’s five warmest years.
CHOICE OF HOW TO MANAGE TEMPERATURE OVERSHOOT
Governments pledged under the 2015 Paris Agreement to try to avoid exceeding 1.5 C of global warming, measured as a decades-long average temperature compared with pre-industrial temperatures.
But their failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions means that target could now be breached before 2030 — a decade earlier than had been predicted when the Paris accord was signed in 2015, ECMWF said. “We are bound to pass it,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. “The choice we now have is how to best manage the inevitable overshoot and its consequences on societies and natural systems.”
Currently, the world’s long-term warming level is about 1.4 C above the pre-industrial era, ECMWF said. Measured on a short-term basis, average annual temperatures breached 1.5 C for the first time in 2024.
EXTREME WEATHER
Exceeding the long-term 1.5 C limit would lead to more extreme and widespread impacts, including hotter and longer heatwaves, and more powerful storms and floods. Already in 2025, wildfires in Europe produced the highest total emissions on record, while scientific studies confirmed specific weather events were made worse by climate change, including Hurricane Melissa in the Caribbean and monsoon rains in Pakistan which killed more than 1,000 people in floods.
Despite these worsening impacts, climate science is facing political pushback. US President Donald Trump, who has called climate change “the greatest con job,” last week withdrew from dozens of UN entities including the scientific Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The long-established consensus among the world’s scientists is that climate change is real, mostly caused by humans, and getting worse. Its main cause is greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, which trap heat in the atmosphere.
