How Can Individual People Most Help Ukraine?

One of the many distressing things about following a crisis like the war in Ukraine from afar is the combination of wishing for people not to suffer and feeling powerless to help them. Even if no single civilian is going to sway the outcome of the war from thousands of miles away, the impulse to reduce others’ suffering is worth listening to.

Determining the best way to help with a global problem, particularly a war, is daunting. Any help helps, though—we shouldn’t overthink it. But we should still, well, it. “When I go and buy something on Amazon, I at least spend a few minutes trying to figure out if I’m buying a kitchen utensil that’s a piece of junk,” Chris Blattman, a professor of global-conflict studies at the University of Chicago and the author of the forthcoming book , told me.