War in Ukraine – 4 years on

April 22, 2026

As Ukraine enters the fifth year of full-scale war, Russia continues to destroy lives, tear families apart and cause widespread destruction to homes and essential services. The humanitarian crisis deepens as Ukraine experiences the coldest winter of the war.

Since the start of the war on 24 February 2022, at least 12.7 million people have been displaced from their homes in Ukraine. Civilian casualties from Russian attacks increased by over 30% in 2025 compared with 2024 and 70% compared to 2023. This is due to widespread use of explosive weapons in populated areas.

The worst winter

Russian attacks have increased in frequency and scale, with heavy use of missiles and drones. During this harsh winter, Russia has sharply intensified its campaign of strikes against civilian populations and key infrastructures in Ukraine. They have deliberately targeting power plants, electrical grids, heating facilities, transport networks and residential areas with missiles and drones. The aim is to deprive civilians of heat, light, water and other essential services amid subzero temperatures, weaponising winter to deepen humanitarian suffering and pressure Ukraine.

How is the war in Ukraine affecting women and girls?

The war in Ukraine has exacerbated the existing structural inequalities and discrimination faced by women and girls. As a result, there is an increase in gender-based violence and women are at increased risk of exploitation – such as trafficking or being forced into transactional sex for food and survival.

Girls, as well as boys in Ukraine, have been forced to leave school especially in the frontline. The ongoing war has further worsened conditions for education at schools and universities, making stable offline learning impossible in many areas.

An increase in domestic and sexual violence in emergencies means there is more demand for services related to gender-based violence and mental health among women and girls, but in Ukraine and refugee recipient countries, there are gaps in services for those in need of protection. Existing services also often overlook the unique experiences of LGBTIQ+ people, creating additional barriers to accessing services.

The challenge for women’s rights organisations

A rapid assessment conducted shortly after the suspension of United States funding in early 2025, found that nearly three-quarters of surveyed organizations reported major operational disruptions, and more than 60% were forced to reduce or suspend gender based violence prevention programmes. However, women’s rights organisations continue to be frontline responders, offering vital services despite facing significant limitations in both human and financial resources.

ActionAid’s response

ActionAid has ensured the protection of women and girls is at the heart of its programmes in Ukraine, including its humanitarian, development and social cohesion work.
ActionAid partner organisations are helping women and girls and young people to restore their physical and mental well-being through psychosocial support. They are also providing legal counselling and safe and sustainable housing and educational opportunities and training necessary to obtain new skills that help them to lead a more dignified life amid crisis and mitigate the effects of the war.

Valentyna’s story

Valentyna (pictured above) is an 85-year-old internally displaced woman from Myrnohrad city, Donetsk region, now living in a collective shelter after fleeing the war.

For more than four decades, Valentyna Terlepnova worked at the “Central” mine, helping build it from the ground up before continuing there in operations and later construction. “I am proud of myself,” she says quietly. “I never skipped work, I worked conscientiously.”

Her life changed in 2022, when Russia’s full-scale invasion reached her town. Shelling shattered windows, destroyed balconies, and left buildings torn open. Glass covered the entrances and courtyards. One nearby building was struck directly, a grenade hit the second entrance and exploded inside. The newly built kindergarten completely destroyed. “It was scary to look at,” she recalls. “There was no water, no electricity. Broken glass everywhere.”

Eventually, volunteers responded to her calls for help, she was evacuated on 23 August 2024. Valentyna has now lived in the shelter for a year and a half.

Today, she still lives in the dormitory-style centre, where she says she feels safe and cared for. The staff provided clothes, shoes, blankets, and basic necessities. “Everything from head to toe,” she says. “They take care of us. You can’t even put it into words.”

Life in the shelter includes more than safety. Residents participate in painting sessions, physical exercises, creative workshops, and group discussions. Through humanitarian support, she also received essential medical devices, including a blood pressure monitor and a blood sugar monitor — items she says she would not have been able to afford on her own. When asked if she would consider moving elsewhere, perhaps abroad, she answers firmly: “I don’t want to go anywhere. I will stay here.”

Protestors at COP 28 in Dubai. Photo: Konrad Skotnicki.

Belfast Climate Change March, 2019. Photo: Trócaire.

The Profit Driving the Crisis

Despite their overwhelming contribution to global emissions, fossil fuel companies continue to attract significant financial backing—driven by their enduring profitability. This is starkly illustrated by the case of ExxonMobil, the top fossil fuel investment held by asset managers based in Ireland. In 2023, ExxonMobil reported €33.63 billion ($36 billion) in profit. That is almost twice the GDP of Botswana (€18.1 billion) and nearly three times Namibia’s GDP (€11.5 billion).

Ireland plays a hugely disproportionate role in facilitating investments into fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil. In 2023, the investments made into fossil fuel companies by investment managers based in Ireland generated an estimated 72.5 million tons of CO2e. This is more than the CO2e emissions for the entire country of Ireland—and more than ten times that generated by Sierra Leone.

The Global Human Impact

The climate crisis is here, now, and it is causing disproportionate harm in the Global South. In Bangladesh, rising sea levels and increasingly severe cyclones are displacing coastal communities, with projections indicating that 17% of the entire country could be underwater by 2050. The legally binding Paris Agreement on climate change explicitly acknowledges the importance of tackling private finance. Its three overarching goals are: keeping below 1.5C of warming; increasing adaptation and making finance flows consistent with low emissions and resilience.

This gives a clear mandate for action: both tax reform and corporate regulation are needed to tackle financial flows, and both nationally in Ireland and at EU level, ‘polluter pays’ taxes are lacking and regulation of the financial sector remains weak and fragmented. While EU regulation exists, it is designed more to nudge investors toward more sustainable investment practices by increasing transparency and reporting levels than to enforce strict standards. And it is moving in the wrong direction: the recently passed EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive excluded investments; and now the EU Commission’s Omnibus legislative proposal threatens to undo the limited gains made on climate plans, as well as blocking future attempts for stronger action at national level.

The Risk of Inaction

Fossil fuel investment is too profitable to remain weakly regulated. If Ireland continues with its current strategy of encouraging FDI at all costs, and relying on weak EU regulation, we are headed for catastrophe. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change has repeatedly warned that every fraction of a degree beyond 1.5°C brings irreversible consequences: collapsed ice sheets, vanishing coral reefs, and extreme weather events that will make vast regions of the planet uninhabitable. And yet, companies are developing oil and gas fields that could push global warming beyond 2°C.

Our research found that 91% of the investments made into fossil fuel companies by investment managers based in Ireland were to companies that have plans for fossil fuel expansion like these. Ireland cannot afford inaction on this issue.

About This Research

The figures in this report regarding investment from Ireland are based on new research commissioned by ActionAid Ireland and Trócaire. In the paper, we uncover the scale of fossil fuel investment through Ireland, who the investors are, and in which fossil fuel companies they are investing. We analyse the current regulatory framework and explain why it is inadequate—and moving in the wrong direction. And we make specific recommendations for change, which are summarised below.

Summary of Recommendations

Regulate the private financial sector
Ireland must end its outsized role as an enabler of destructive fossil fuel investment. Ireland should introduce a strong gender-responsive national human rights and environmental due diligence framework which includes the regulation of investors with respect to human rights and the environment and climate. The transposition of the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive could achieve this if downstream activities are included and the Omnibus proposal is rejected. Ireland should prohibit investments in fossil fuel expansion and require investors to implement climate transition plans consistent with a 1.5°C climate limit.

Endorse the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty
Ireland should endorse developing a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to curb fossil fuel expansion and commit to a fair and funded phase out of fossil fuels.

Support tax justice
Ireland should support bold and fair new global tax rules through the UN Framework Convention on Tax, should adopt all OECD BEPS measures, and should conduct an updated and comprehensive spillover analysis of its tax policy. Ireland should take coordinated action globally, at the EU level and domestically to introduce a range of new taxes to mobilise finance needed for climate justice, based on ‘polluter pays’ and social equity principles such as wealth taxes for the highest earners, climate damages tax on investors, fossil fuel production taxes and levies on aviation and shipping.

Finance a just transition
Ireland must also meet its fair share climate finance obligations under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement, and pay our ecological debt to the Global South. Ireland should support conditionality-free debt cancellation for countries on the front lines of the climate crisis, commit to a new UN Framework Convention on Sovereign Debt, moving debt negotiations from the IMF to the UN, and to a debt workout mechanism that is fully representative and fair.