“The other night the sky turned completely red, something that hadn’t happened in a while. We were really scared,” says Tatiana, a former tour guide from Kyiv, who, for the umpteenth time in the past three years, was woken up by explosions. “We’re still lucky compared to those living near the front line, but since the beginning of this war, no one has been able to sleep,” she says. “Almost every night we are woken by the sound of sirens, even though we no longer go down to the subway to wait for it to end.”
Tatiana lives on the fifth floor of one of the hundreds of apartment buildings near the Holosiivskyi Park, in the southern part of the Ukrainian capital. She lives there with her husband and her elderly mother, who has mobility issues: “Taking her out in the middle of the night to the nearest shelter means walking at least five or six hundred meters. It takes more than twenty minutes, and a missile strike would certainly be faster. And if the alarm goes off again an hour later, we’d have to start all over again. We’ve decided it’s better to stay home, we keep away from the windows and stay in the hallway.”
Last year, a missile hit a building near Tatiana’s, and the shrapnel spread for hundreds of meters, damaging many other nearby buildings. Some still bear the marks, with plywood panels and plastic sheets in place of windows. “Sometimes it’s just luck,” the woman stresses, “but you can’t help but keep living, so we carry on. I’ve never left this place, but other friends and colleagues have moved away. Some later decided to return—too much time had passed, the money ran out, and the desire to be home became urgent.”
On the night between April 24 and 25, Kyiv came under a heavy attack of missiles and drones once again, resulting in the deaths of 12 people and injuring a further ninety. A massacre, following the one in Sumy on Palm Sunday, came at a very delicate moment for Ukraine’s future, amid ceasefire plans that were announced but not complied with, and now a new “humanitarian truce” promised by Russia for the upcoming 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, from May 8 to 11.
Just a few days later, during the night between April 30 and May 1, an agreement was signed for the “creation of a joint reconstruction fund” between the Ukrainian government and the United States. Known as the “rare earth minerals deal,” it grants Washington privileged access to investments in the country, along with a share of the profits from the exploitation of aluminum, graphite, oil, and gas deposits, in exchange for new military aid.
Meanwhile, the attacks have not stopped. And just hours after the agreement that re-establishes alignment between Kyiv and the United States following weeks of tension, Odessa was hit again.
“It’s a situation that is very hard for us to accept,” says Father Vladymr, a young pastor of the local Lutheran church of Saint Paul. “It’s a war we never wanted and one we hoped until the last moment would not break out. Three years in, people are beginning to face many problems related to the conflict, because in nearly every family there is a relative on the front lines or one who is ready to go and just waiting for the call. Many have been forced to leave their homes and flee from what are now occupied territories. Here in the city and also in the Odessa region, we’ve taken in thousands of displaced people who don’t know if they’ll ever be able to return. It’s a truly frustrating situation.”
His church recently organized a meeting between representatives of various religious confessions present in the city and the Committee of Mothers of Soldiers at the Front, one of the many grassroots organizations that have emerged over the years out of the need to share experiences and provide comfort in a situation affecting innumerable families.
Father Roman Megianiv, a military chaplain who has just returned from the front, also took part in the meeting to share his direct testimony of life on the front lines. “We have soldiers who still manage to look ahead with hope and keep their spirits high, thanks in part to commanding officers who know how to motivate them,” he explains. “But unfortunately, cases of depression—and sometimes even suicidal thoughts—are becoming more frequent. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s a real phenomenon that shows us the difficulties these young people face day after day, risking their lives in a war that is turning into a war of attrition. We try to support them spiritually, because sometimes a word of comfort is needed more than an extra food ration. And the same goes for the mothers waiting at home, or in displacement centers, often for weeks without getting any news.”
According to official Ukrainian sources, 46,000 soldiers have died since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion, and over 380,000 have been wounded. To that number must be added the tens of thousands of troops presumably captured in battle in territories now under occupation, whose whereabouts and fate remain completely unknown. Independent non-governmental sources estimate even higher figures for Ukrainian military casualties, at least 70,000 dead. What is certain is that in every cemetery, from the smallest rural village to the largest city, new yellow and blue flags can be seen almost every day, alongside fresh wreaths of flowers laid atop freshly turned earth.
On the Russian side, the independent site Mediazona, in collaboration with the BBC Russian Service, has confirmed the identities of over 101,000 Russian soldiers killed in the conflict in Ukraine.
“The war has changed compared to the beginning, when Russia deployed columns of often outdated military vehicles,” explains Inna (a pseudonym), a woman of Russian birth but now Ukrainian by choice. She is a volunteer and founder of a preschool that, over the past three years, has also become a shelter for displaced families and unaccompanied children. “Now, almost everything is handled remotely with drones, and they’re able to strike over incredibly long distances with great precision. Reaching cities at any time and in any place — whether near occupied territories or far away, even on the other side of the country — has become a strategy to strike terror in the population, wear down their mental resistance, and make them more willing to accept peace at any cost, even if it means nullifying all the sacrifices made so far in terms of human lives, the wounded, and the destruction of our country.”
Inna considers herself Ukrainian and is now trying to obtain citizenship, as her father was born here: “I can’t go through official channels, because if I entered a Russian embassy, in any country, I would in all likelihood be arrested for treason.”
Since the start of the conflict, she has taken part in numerous missions alongside the military and various humanitarian organizations; she has delivered aid and supplies to front line areas, sometimes using her own car. She’s been helping displaced people since Zaporizhzhia was receiving residents fleeing from Mariupol—then still under siege, but not yet occupied. In Kharkiv, she met some of the last civilians who remained just a few kilometers from the front lines, when the city was on the verge of falling to Russia in 2022. There, she collected stories from people who had lived for months in school basements, underground, along with children and pets.
“In Bakhmut, in 2023, I managed to enter the city with other volunteers shortly before it fell into Russian hands, and evacuate children who had been living in a basement for nearly a year. Their condition was indescribable. We drove under sniper fire—and yet, even though it was dangerous, you had a chance of making it. Today, with the widespread use of drones controlled remotely like video game joysticks, it wouldn’t even be conceivable to take those same roads and survive. In a few years, front line combat may disappear entirely, and wars will be fought entirely like this, using technology. It’s a terrifying scenario, because there will be less awareness of the destruction, but far more victims.”
Inna, like everyone else, is worried about the future developments of this conflict. “Trump’s return to the scene has made everything more complicated: one day he seems willing to continue supporting Ukraine, the next he’s cozying up to Russia again. The truth is, without international support, we have no chance of winning—it’s sad to admit, but thinking otherwise would be delusional. The question is, what do we have to sacrifice to get that support? Our resources to the United States? Some of our territories, taken by force, to Russia? Meanwhile, Europe still can’t assert a clear and united position, so everything ends up in America’s hands—it almost feels like we’ve gone back a few decades. But the world has completely changed in the meantime. I don’t know what’s going to happen, we just keep going. Next weekend we’re heading to Sloviansk, I’m accompanying a physical therapist to help the frontline soldiers there.”
Cover image: the memorial for the fallen in Independence Square in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Photo by Ilaria Romano, all reproduction rights reserved)
Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to see and interact with our latest contents.
If you like our stories, events, publications and dossiers, sign up for our newsletter (twice a month).