EAST SOS Appealed to the Prime Minister to Designate the Ministry Responsible for Evacuation Coordination
The EAST SOS Charity Foundation submitted an appeal to Prime Minister of Ukraine Serhii Koretskyi regarding the uninterrupted operation of the state system for evacuation coordination. The recent government reshuffle resulted in legal ambiguity. At present, it remains unclear which official leads the Coordination Headquarters for Evacuation Measures and which central executive authority supports its work.
The Coordination Headquarters has been operating under the Cabinet of Ministers since July 2022. After the Ministry for Reintegration was dissolved, leadership of the Headquarters passed to the Deputy Prime Minister for Restoration of Ukraine, who also served as the Minister for Development of Communities and Territories of Ukraine, while its operational support was assigned to the Ministry for Development.
On July 16, 2026, the Verkhovna Rada appointed a new Cabinet. Under Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 963 of July 17, the Ministry for Development was renamed the Ministry for Restoration, Infrastructure, and Transport of Ukraine, and a new Ministry for Communities, Territories, and Internally Displaced Persons of Ukraine was created.
However, the specific position assigned to lead the Coordination Headquarters no longer exists in the new Cabinet structure. The regulations on the ministries have not yet been approved, and their powers have not yet been fully divided.
Why is it critically important to determine who is responsible for organizing the work of the Coordination Headquarters?
The Coordination Headquarters ensures that evacuation of civilians from active combat zones are initiated without delay. At its meetings, decisions of regional military administrations on the mandatory evacuation of children are approved, and operational issues related to evacuation routes, assembly and intermediate points, transit centers, and collective sites are resolved. The Headquarters also coordinates the personnel and resources needed to carry out evacuations.
If the work of the Coordination Headquarters is not restored promptly, this may delay decisions on announcing evacuations, create organizational inconsistencies, and slow down the work of transit centers and multidisciplinary teams. In addition, it will also disrupt cooperation with the NGOs and international organizations, which provide a significant part of evacuation logistics.
The EAST SOS Charity Foundation calls for the following actions:
• the immediate designation of the central executive authority responsible for supporting the work of the Coordination Headquarters, assigning its chairmanship to a specific position within the Government;
• considering the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine as the priority option, since the Cabinet of Ministers directs the State Emergency Service and the National Police through the Minister of Internal Affairs, and these bodies are directly involved in carrying out evacuation measures;
• introducing amendments to Resolution No. 854 and approving the updated list of officials included in the Coordination Headquarters.
Any pause in the work of the Coordination Headquarters directly affects the possibility to announce and carry out evacuations on time, therefore endangering the lives and safety of people who still remain in areas of hostilities.
