The cost of a year of warfare in Ukraine has been staggering, with tens of thousands of people dead or maimed and millions driven from their homes. LauraKingLAT spoke with six Ukrainians about their experiences over the past year:
Almost everyone in Ukraine can recall some vivid scrap of what they were feeling and doing last Feb. 24, the day Vladimir Putin’s army launched Europe’s biggest land war since 1945, seeking to subdue a country that the Russian president claims is not in fact a country.
Over the months, the narrative has veered from Ukraine’s unexpectedly fierce resistance and unlikely battlefield triumphs to the ugly potential for a long, grinding fight that neither side can win.for a few yards of territory at a time. And Russia continues to pummel civilian areas and the national power grid with waves of drone and missile strikes aimed at smashing both infrastructure and public morale.
At first, the young lieutenant thought that his mortar unit, operating in a fiercely contested battle zone in southern Ukraine, had come under fire. Then Mykola Zaretskiy realized he had stepped on what he now believes was a cluster munition. The blast on that October day blew off his left foot and sprayed his other leg with shrapnel.“My first thought was, ‘OK, I’m alive,’” said the 30-year-old, who has close-cropped hair and a methodical manner. “My second was that this war is over for me.
By the time he was able to make the difficult call to his wife, his army buddies had already let her know he was seriously hurt but would survive. In a video call with his mother, he let her see the shrapnel-injured leg but at first hid the one with the missing foot beneath a blanket. Start-up hours were so long that when the Russian invasion was launched before dawn, Rudenko had shut down for the night only a few hours earlier. She and her staff went straight back to work — and have scarcely stopped since.“The invasion started, all eyes were on Ukraine, and we were there,” she said. “We see ourselves as the world’s window into Ukraine, and Ukraine’s voice in the world.”
Melitopol, a transport hub near the Black Sea coast with a prewar population of about 150,000, fell to Russia at the very start of the war. As astonishing as it seems in retrospect, Russian forces there, as elsewhere, apparently believed they would be greeted as liberators. It took about two weeks, Federov said, before the occupiers “understood things did not go according to their plan” — that they were, in the eyes of most, a hated presence.
Even if Ukraine prevails, mending community ties in countless towns and cities will be difficult. Many who fled suspect that some of those who stayed behind have. Some of those who remained in the city feel abandoned by neighbors who escaped. “I’ve had this impression from the beginning, that Ukrainian literature was looking for a language that can depict this war,” said Kruk, who lives in
Sakhyiuk started work as a barkeep only the month before the war began. He left for a few months to be with family in their provincial town when Russian troops were menacing the city, but he soon returned, and now Ukraine’s quirky capital feels like home. Health issues prevented him from enlisting, but he believes Ukrainian solidarity is unbroken by a year like none he has ever seen.Then he turned his attention to preparing a customer’s drink. “Go on, take a few sips first,” he urged.
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