Russia-Ukraine War: Live Updates – New York Times
KYIV, Ukraine – During the first months of the war, Yulia Fedotovskyh found a coping mechanism to help her sleep at night: She flipped through the Telegram every night, looking at photos of burnt and blown up dead Russian soldiers.
At first, she said, looking at the pictures helped her feel safer. But now that the conflict is dragging on, she said she felt exhausted by war. She tries to avoid the news and no longer gets satisfaction from the photographs.
“I scrolled through Telegram every night before I went to bed, otherwise it was hard to fall asleep,” says Fedotovskyh, 32, a PR manager for an IT company. Nowadays, she added, “I realize and have accepted that I can die at any time, and so I just live my life.”
Almost five months into a bloody war in which Russia is steadily making territorial gains, many Ukrainians are still angry and defiant.
The fall of Lysychansk over the weekend, which handed over the heavily disputed eastern province of Luhansk to Russia, was just the latest in a series of heavy blows, including some of the worst attacks on civilian targets since Russia invaded in late February. It was a missile attack on a shopping center in the town of Kremenchuk that killed at least 20 people. A strike in a holiday town near Odesa that killed at least 21 people. A strike on a residential building in the capital that shattered the city’s fragile veneers of security.
The leadership of Russian troops from the capital at the end of March gave the Ukrainians a strong sense of pride in their country and their military, and a hope that victory could come quickly. But as the war shows no signs of abating, people are getting angrier with the losses and expressing frustration that the Ukrainian government is toning down the challenges ahead of us in an attempt to raise morale.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has captivated the world with his determination and signature green T-shirt, continues to appeal to Ukrainians in nightly speeches filled with determination and defiance.
“Something needs to be done about the policy of informing the population,” Sergii Neretin, a journalist and former deputy head of the Ukrainian State Film Agency, wrote on Facebook.
He noted that Ukrainian officials had justified the withdrawal of their forces from the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk by saying that it would help defend Lysychansk, its last major stronghold in the Luhansk region. Then Lysychansk fell.
“Almost every day we get weapons, more and more powerful, and the pictures show how they coldly crush the enemy,” he wrote. “How should we perceive information about our achievements, power and weapons supply in the future?” he asked. “Read between the lines or take them at their word?”
The war has also led to a huge humanitarian crisis, which has sent millions of people fleeing their homes and severely affected the supply of Ukrainians.
Only 5 percent of Ukrainians say they live comfortably on their current income, according to a survey released this week by the National Democratic Institute.
Nevertheless, a large majority of Ukrainians still have a strong belief in the armed forces as well as in Mr. Zelensky, according to the survey.
Svitlana Kolodi, 34, a crowdfunding expert, said she had raised money to support Ukrainian soldiers and was resigned to the fact that the war would continue after the fall.
And few Ukrainians are interested in compromising with Russia. Ukrainians are “demonstrably uninterested in exchanging land for peace,” the NDI survey found. 89 percent of respondents said the only acceptable scenario was the recapture of all territory occupied by Russia, including the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014.
“There is no compromise with Russia,” said Mariana Horchenko, a 37-year-old dental worker from Kyiv. “Not after all the people who have been killed.”