Resilience and vulnerability of Ukrainians : The role of family during the war

The full-scale russian invasion of Ukraine led to numerous physical and moral challenges. The paper aims to estimate the role of family as a social resilience driver in managing wartime challenges on a regional level. It used the online survey method based on Google Forms and online focus-group interviews in September-November 2022. Household members (1,089 respondents) of Kyiv, Lviv, Zakarpattia, Mykolaiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, and Dnipropetrovsk territorial communities were surveyed. Most respondents generally positively assess Ukraine’s prospects; 59% believe that the situation in the country will most likely improve. During war escalation, 67.2% of respondents waited for family support, and 48.8% helped their relatives, but relying on family support did not increase their safety expectations.

In communities that did not increase their activity level in response to the war by one percentage point, the “feeling unsafe” responses increased by 1.8 percentage points, which means that an active civil position is also responsible for feeling safe (other things being equal) and increasing society’s resilience. At the same time, even in wartime, the indicators of social atomization are quite high, as 46.2% relied only on themselves and solved their problems independently, without anyone’s help. Therefore, developing family relations is one of the effective mechanisms for raising internal human resources to manage wartime challenges.