- June 18, 2026
- 7:20 pm
- Ukraine
On June 16, 2026, the Israeli publication מקור ראשון / Makor Rishon published an article by David Zvuluni about the situation of the Jewish community in Ukraine after a new wave of Russian missile and drone attacks.
More than a thousand homes of Jewish families in Ukraine need urgent repairs. Among those who have lost not only their homes but also their sense of security are Holocaust survivors and their children—people who have already gone through war, evacuations, destruction, and fear.
Eighty years after World War II, they once again see shattered windows, cracks in walls, destroyed roofs, and apartments that are uninhabitable.
Russian attacks have hit the homes of Jewish families in Ukraine.
The scale of the destruction was reported by World Jewish Relief—a Jewish humanitarian organization headquartered in London, which has been working in Ukraine for many years through a network of local partners.
According to the organization’s preliminary estimates, the most severe damage has been recorded in several Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv and Sumy. These cities have become targets of intensified Russian missile and drone attacks in recent weeks.
In many cases, homes have temporarily become uninhabitable. The blast wave knocked out doors and windows, damaged walls, roofs, and building structures.
For elderly families, this is not just a domestic problem. If a person has no money, strength, or relatives nearby, even a broken window can force them to move. And when walls and roofs are destroyed, a home ceases to be a refuge and becomes another source of danger.
Why this community is particularly vulnerable
Before the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, Ukraine remained home to one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe.
This is a community with a centuries-old history, having survived tsarist-era pogroms, the Holocaust, Soviet repressions, and decades of heavy memories. After the start of the great war, a new wave of dispersion emerged: tens of thousands of Jews left Ukraine and moved to Israel, Western Europe, or North America.
But many stayed.
Most often, these are elderly people who find it difficult to leave physically, financially, and psychologically. They have doctors, neighbors, graves of relatives, familiar streets, and apartments in Ukraine where their lives have passed. This part of the Jewish community is particularly at risk today.
Help is needed now, not after the war
World Jewish Relief assists approximately 8,000 elderly Jews in Ukraine. This includes financial support, home care, medicines, food, and other basic assistance, without which many people cannot withstand the consequences of the war.
Now, a new task has been added to this burden—urgent repairs of damaged homes and finding temporary housing for those who can no longer stay in their apartments.
For the Israeli audience, this topic should not sound like a distant Ukrainian news story. It concerns Jewish families who have survived the traumas of the 20th century and are once again facing destruction. This is why НАновости — News of Israel | Nikk.Agency view such materials not only as a chronicle of war but also as part of the shared Jewish memory, responsibility, and connection between Israel and Ukraine.
World Jewish Relief CEO Paul Anticoni stated that the current scale of destruction goes far beyond the usual assistance the organization has provided before. Over the past fifteen years, World Jewish Relief has helped repair about 3,500 homes of members of the Jewish community in Ukraine.
Now, according to his estimate, at least a thousand homes need urgent work in the coming weeks. And the situation could worsen if Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities continue.
What lies behind the figure of ‘more than a thousand homes’
The figure of a thousand damaged homes not only shows the scale of the disaster within the Jewish community. It reflects the overall pressure that the war continues to exert on the civilian population of Ukraine.
In recent months, Moscow has intensified the use of missiles and drones against infrastructure, urban areas, and residential neighborhoods. Kyiv reports an increase in attacks on civilian targets. Footage from Ukraine once again shows damaged high-rises, schools, streets without normal utilities, and people trying to live amid alarms.
For elderly Jews, this reality is especially painful. Many grew up in families where the memory of war, evacuations, ghettos, mass killings, and loss of home was not a story from a textbook but a family experience.
Now they are once again facing destroyed walls.
It is important for Israel to see the specific people behind the war
Paul Anticoni called Ukrainian Jews one of the most vulnerable Jewish communities in the world. This is not an emotional phrase but an accurate description of a situation that is often lost behind military reports.
Behind the words ‘missile attack,’ ‘damaged buildings,’ and ‘strike on infrastructure’ are elderly people who want to stay in the city where they were born. They want to live in the home they built over decades, next to neighbors, doctors, synagogues, cemeteries of relatives, and familiar streets.
For Israel, this story has direct human significance. Ukraine today is not only the front of Russia’s war against an independent state. It is also a place where thousands of Jews live, including Holocaust survivors, people with relatives in Israel, and families connected to our shared history.
When Russian terrorists strike Ukrainian cities, they do not hit abstract objects.
They hit homes, memory, the elderly, children, and communities. If more than a thousand Jewish homes in Ukraine already require urgent restoration, it means this is not a local episode but a humanitarian signal that Israel should not miss.