How Nova Ukraine’s Warming Project kept stabilization points running through the winter of 2025–2026
There is a place in eastern Ukraine, roughly five kilometers from the front line, where the electricity has been gone for a month. The wounded keep arriving. The medics keep working. And the lights stay on, because of a generator.
Kateryna, who visited the site recently for Nova Ukraine’s press office, described what she saw plainly. “Generators aren’t just saving the day,” she said. “They’re the only thing keeping this location powered so it doesn’t lose electricity.”
This is the work of the Warming Project.
A winter that did not let up
The winter of 2025 to 2026 was one of the hardest Ukraine has endured since 2022. Temperatures sat near minus 20 degrees Celsius for weeks at a time. Russian strikes continued to target energy infrastructure across the country, with the heaviest damage concentrated near the front. In many of these zones, central heating no longer exists.
Stabilization points sit inside those zones. They are the first stop for wounded soldiers and civilians before evacuation to hospitals further from the fighting. Survival here depends on minutes. It also depends on whether the building has light, heat, and equipment that works.
This is where the Warming Project came in.
Build, at the medical front
Nova Ukraine’s Build pillar focuses on the physical conditions that keep people in Ukraine safe: shelters, heating, drinking water, and energy. The Warming Project is built directly to the medical front line. Over the course of the winter, Nova Ukraine and partner organization CO CF “OWN HAND” (Vlasnoruch) equipped more than 100 stabilization points and medical evacuation teams with the means to operate without the public grid.
The numbers from the project total:
- 130 charging stations for powering medical equipment during electricity outages
- 71 generators for providing off-grid power to healthcare facilities
- 96 blood and fluid warmers for preventing hypothermia during blood transfusions and rapid fluid infusion
- 164 diesel heaters
- 95 UFO (infrared heaters) heaters
Each category answers a different question that the winter kept asking the medics on the ground.
What 212 generators and 161 charging stations actually power
Generators and EcoFlow charging stations are the difference between an operating room and a dark room. They run surgical lights, monitors, suction units, and the dozens of small devices a stabilization point depends on between the moment a wounded soldier arrives and the moment they are stable enough to move. They also keep the building itself functional. Communications. Heating system pumps. Refrigeration for blood and medication.
Kateryna’s account from the front-line site is one version of this. A month without grid electricity, and the work continues because the equipment continues.
Why 164 diesel heaters and 95 UFO heaters matter in an operating room
Olena, a medical professional working with one of the supported stabilization points, gave a description of the winter that gets at the medical stakes directly.
“This winter has been extremely challenging, with severe морози combined with constant power outages,” she said. (Морози is the Ukrainian word for the deep frosts that hold for days at a time.) “At the same time, we continue working in operating rooms where maintaining warmth is critical to prevent wounded service members from developing hypothermia, ensuring that all life-saving efforts are not in vain. That is why heaters have become an essential part of our work during this period.”
Hypothermia in a wounded patient slows blood clotting, strains the heart, and can undo the work of every other medical intervention happening in the room. Keeping the room warm is medical work.
What a fluid warmer does, and why 96 of them mattered this winter
The most technical piece of equipment in the project is also the most quietly decisive.
Olena explained: “In critical cases where a single service member requires a massive blood transfusion, up to 17 units at once, we use multiple access ports to rapidly restore circulating blood volume. In such situations, fluid warmers play a crucial role: they help maintain the temperature of administered fluids, which is vital for stabilizing the patient’s condition.”
Some context on that number. The average adult human body holds roughly 10 to 12 units of blood. A 17-unit transfusion means replacing a person’s entire blood supply about one and a half times over, often in minutes. Cold fluid going into a patient who has already lost most of their blood can stop the heart, prevent clotting, and overwhelm a body that has nothing left to give.
Blood and fluid warmers bring intravenous fluids to body temperature, around 36 to 37 degrees Celsius, before they reach the patient. The transfusion does the job it was meant to do.
What the Warming Project is part of
Nova Ukraine has supported stabilization points and medical evacuation teams as an ongoing program, with medical equipment, medications, and supplies moving toward the front in a steady stream since the start of the full-scale invasion. The Warming Project covered the months when stabilization points faced both the cold and the power outages at once.
That problem does not end when the snow does. Equipment fails. Locations move. New medical teams form near new areas of fighting. The work continues into the next season, and the season after that.
For now, in a building five kilometers from the front line, the lights are on.
