It’s a lot of money: more than $30 billion.
Ukraine is by far the top recipient of US Agency for International Development (USAID) funding since 2022. And that’s not even counting the billions that have gone to weapons, munitions, and military equipment.
But Yuriy Boyechko, president of Hope for Ukraine, a nonprofit that serves the country’s poorest communities, thinks about the firewood.
Some of that $30 billion went toward keeping older people warm and giving them fuel to cook their food. President Donald Trump’s sweeping “stop work” order on American aid in January shut down humanitarian programs. One of the paused projects, headed by a Hope for Ukraine partner organization, provided people with wood.
“These people rely on firewood to keep warm in the winter and to cook food,” Boyechko told Christianity Today.
In the war-ravaged regions of Sumy, Dnipro, and Donetsk, many of the people who could not flee Russia’s full-scale assault now live in shelters that look like “barns with the doors open all the time.” Most of the remaining residents are elderly. The temperature likely won’t climb above freezing until the end of February or maybe March.
“They’ve been living without electricity,” Boyechko said, “some of them for two-plus years.”
Hope for Ukraine, Mission to the World, and Mission Eurasia leaders told CT that the Trump administration’s funding freeze hasn’t affected their programs. But the order has impacted many of their partners, and Christians working in the region are concerned about the devastation that could result from even a 90-day pause.
related
Military aid has not changed. Affected programs include refugee shelters, remote learning (a necessity for the majority of children in frontline regions), health care for internally displaced people, military veteran rehabilitation, and salaries for first responders.
“I totally understand that they want to audit, but I think to completely cut funding in the middle of winter is a little bit too harsh,” Boyechko said. “This particular freeze is going to impact the most vulnerable people on the ground, and it’s coming at the worst time.”
Elon Musk, who leads the new Department of Government Efficiency, has framed the freeze on USAID as a battle against corruption. And there’s no question there is corruption.
Ukraine ranks low on Transparency International’s corruption index—104 out of 180 countries. Some of the aid that has been paused was, in fact, going to anti-corruption initiatives. The country has made some progress in the last 11 years, especially through reforms to the justice system that increased the independence of the judiciary. Ukraine has improved by six points on Transparency International’s scale since Volodymyr Zelensky became president.
The US Congress also built anti-corruption measures into Ukraine’s USAID funding, including third-party, in-person monitoring and the use of separate, fully auditable accounts. The Office of Inspector General must assess the safeguards and report to the legislature every 45 days. The World Bank also monitors the funding.
Christian ministries in Ukraine say they wouldn’t object to more oversight. But concerns about corruption don’t justify a funding freeze, and they worry about Ukrainians who are going to suffer because of it.
“Even a temporary disruption in aid could further exacerbate the crisis for displaced and refugee communities,” Mission Eurasia president Sergey Rakhuba said.
The disruption could also put the country in a worse position to negotiate a possible settlement with Russia. Experts expect the next six months to be critical. The situation doesn’t look great for Ukraine. Zelensky has called for four-way peace talks between Ukraine, Russia, the US, and the European Union, But Russian leaders deny he’s the legitimate leader of Ukraine. Russia has also stepped up executions of Ukrainian soldiers, continued to barrage Ukraine with airstrikes, and pushed for more territory.
“This is a very critical time for a country that’s barely standing,” Boyechko told CT.
But as a Christian, his main focus is not the conflict or the politics of foreign aid and government efficiency.
“When I see innocent suffering needlessly, that’s where my compassion and my faith in Jesus supersedes my political views,” Boyechko said. “Jesus gave bread and fish to everyone.”
