{"id":17783,"date":"2026-02-24T01:29:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T09:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=17783"},"modified":"2026-03-01T00:37:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T08:37:20","slug":"issue-of-the-week-war-human-rights-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=17783","title":{"rendered":"Issue of the Week: War, Human Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/planetearthfdn.org\/news\">Back to News<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/IMG_5271.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Wall of Remembrance, Kyiv, Ukraine (c) 2026 Planet Earth Foundation, All Rights Reserved<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The End Of Civilization As We Knew it, Part Thirty Five <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>UPDATE:<\/strong> Linked below is a new production for the fourth anniversary of the full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It features reflections by Keith Blume, founder of Planet Earth Foundation, at Independence Square in Kyiv, with footage from Foundation Project Director and cinematographer, Clara Lippert, of scenes throughout Kyiv and other areas in Ukraine, as well as Berlin, related to Ukrianian refugees and the historical context of the war. Our documentary on Ukrainian refugees and activists in Berlin from 2022 is linked <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/719498377\">here<\/a>. Further productions from recent filming and interviews in Ukraine, and planned return, are in process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-vimeo wp-block-embed-vimeo\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The War for the Future: Fourth Anniversary\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1169079950?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><strong>. . .<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Four years ago today, the full-scale Russian aggression in invading Ukraine began. It goes on still. There are no words to describe the horror and importance of this war, as no other, since World War Two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We have been <a href=\"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=17526\">reporting and commenting on Ukraine<\/a> since before four years ago, (linked here in the <a href=\"https:\/\/planetearthfdn.org\/current-work\">&#8220;Ukraine&#8221; section<\/a> of Current Projects) including recently <a href=\"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=17183\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=17042\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=16803\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=16749\">here<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=17074\">here<\/a>, as the aggression began even before the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, the first time anything like this had happened in Europe since the end of World War Two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We returned from a journey to Ukraine not long ago to film events and interviews covering the war and are assembling documentary productions from this, and from planned return for more filming. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How many times up to just a few nights ago have we heard in calls to or from Ukraine, &#8220;We&#8217;re still alive,&#8221; in the midst of increasing nightly missile and drone attacks on Kyiv to kill civilians, destroy power, freeze civilians to death, starve civilians to death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But still, after four years, they don&#8217;t give up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is an eerie silence about this anniversary, with some exceptions, that would have been impossible to imagine even a short time ago. We&#8217;ve covered the reasons before, and will again in more depth as events unfold. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A generally agreed international order existed after World War Two, even during the Cold War. Then, in 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, liberal democracy was ascendent everywhere and appeared to finally be the future of humanity. It didn&#8217;t last for the same reasons all conflicts and lack of freedom and regression have always happened&#8211;inequality with the few increasingly controlling wealth and power. It has been, to borrow the immortal phrase of JFK about the Cold War, a &#8220;long twighlight struggle.&#8221; Such could be said of the struggle for freedom and equality through all of history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, however, we are on the knife&#8217;s edge of history as never before in multiple ways, with weapons of mass destruction and mass distraction, environmental crises, technological changes on an exponentially new level, less than one percent of the population controlling over half of the world&#8217;s wealth and the accompanying classism, racism, sexism, cynicism, nihilism, narcissism, and lack of intellectual and moral integrity corroding individuals and societies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are numerous conflicts, hunger and disease, and many other risks that will be the catalysts for unprecedented cataclysms unless successfully addressed. The threats to liberal democracy are everywhere&#8211;in the United States, Europe, Central and South America, Africa, Asia, and so on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, no issue is likely to have more weight in the global struggle between liberal democracy and equality, and dictatorship and brutality&#8211;and risk of global war&#8211;than Ukraine. It could be, and has been, described as the war for the future, in numerous ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As we contiinue our own work on reporting, commenting and creating media on Ukraine, we note one extraordinary piece of journalism and commentary published in The New York Times on Sunday titled <em>Ukraine Has Passed a Point of No Return<\/em>. It comes the closest in one sitting to illuminating the situation in Ukraine, past present and to come, as we personally have experienced it ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here it is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"link-2400fc9b\">Ukraine Has Passed a Point of No Return<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p>By&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/m-gessen\">M. Gessen<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Visuals by&nbsp;Mila Teshaieva <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>M. Gessen is an Opinion Columnist, reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine. Ms. Teshaieva is a Ukrainian photographer and filmmaker based in Berlin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Feb. 22, 2026, The New York Times<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>In the middle of the last Saturday of January, hundreds of people congregated on the frozen Dnipro River for a rave. Under the high noon sun, the world was white: the tall apartment blocks lining the riverbank, the unplowed boardwalk and the flat, snow-covered expanse of ice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With a citywide curfew in effect, parties in Kyiv have long moved to daytime hours, and with much of the city lacking light and heat, it makes sense to gather outdoors. So adults of different ages, dressed in puffy coats of every color, baggy designer sweatpants and chunky Uggs, had gathered, though there wasn\u2019t much dancing, perhaps because the battery-powered speakers weren\u2019t quite strong enough to blast music through the open air. There was, however, much mingling, some barbecuing, a lot of mulled wine and at least one book burning, of a Russian-language young-adult novel. Kids in snow pants slid down the steep, iced-over bank of the river; when they skidded across the ice, they knocked over a few adults.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After the music ended, as scheduled, at 3 p.m., many of the revelers poured into a cafe overlooking the river. It was a quintessential Kyiv scene: exaggeratedly large wineglasses on sturdy wooden tables, a seafood bar, a display of bottles \u2014 impeccable style and a commitment to enjoyment as resistance to the Russian onslaught. But a few minutes after the influx of customers, a waitress announced: \u201cWe have no water. I won\u2019t be taking orders.\u201d Seconds later, the electricity went off, taking the music and the lights with it and turning the oyster display cases into dark gray boxes. Most of the customers left. The waiters vanished, too, leaving dirty dishes on many tables. The cafe looked like a movie set after the director shouts \u201cCut!\u201d and the actors and crew disperse, exhausted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kyiv is tired. For most of the four years since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the capital city has insisted on maintaining or restoring its usual vibrant urban life. Theaters have been operating, as have art galleries and museums (although permanent collections have been stowed away in safe locations); universities and secondary schools have continued in-person instruction; electric bikes and scooters have been well maintained; the metro has kept running; and the railroad has served the city like clockwork. The railroad in particular has become a symbol of Ukrainian&nbsp;<em>nezlamnist \u2014&nbsp;<\/em>invincibility or, literally, unbreakability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But with Russia\u2019s attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure leaving people without light and heat for weeks on end, living a normal life has become untenable. It is probably fair to say that there isn\u2019t a place or a person left in Ukraine who can forget about the war for even a few minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>People still try \u2014 not to forget, but to continue living the best possible life every minute. After a short while, the waiters at the riverbank cafe returned and cleared the tables. New customers came in. Someone restarted the generator, bringing the lights and the music back. Without running water, the place couldn\u2019t serve food, but there could still be \u2014 and there was \u2014 drinking. Soon, the sun went down and the giant apartment blocks dissolved into the dark sky. Only a few windows flickered dimly, perhaps with the light of candles, oil lamps or a few battery-powered fixtures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Feb. 24 marks the fourth anniversary<\/strong>&nbsp;of the full-scale invasion. Four years is a particularly significant milestone for people who, like me, grew up in the Soviet Union, in the eternal shadow of World War II, because four years was the duration of the fight against the Nazis. The number was seared into our minds. Four years in which the Soviets fought what they called the Great Patriotic War. Four years that created the country we lived in \u2014 its superpower status, its claim to world moral superiority. Four years of death, displacement, of tens of millions of people being called upon to sacrifice for their country\u2019s war effort. The slogan of those years was \u201cEverything for victory.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/18\/multimedia\/00gessen-17-jzkq\/00gessen-17-jzkq-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"Tiny blue and yellow flags and tall ones poke out of the snow amid framed photographs of young men. \"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The evolving tributes in Independence Square in Kyiv reflect shifting ideas about Ukraine\u2019s history and resistance.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/18\/multimedia\/00gessen-04-jzkq\/00gessen-04-jzkq-mobileMasterAt3x-v2.jpg?auto=webp&amp;quality=90\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/18\/multimedia\/00gessen-05-jzkq\/00gessen-05-jzkq-mobileMasterAt3x-v2.jpg?auto=webp&amp;quality=90\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>One of Lviv\u2019s daily funerals for fallen soldiers. Some cemeteries are nearing capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mila Teshaieva, the photographer I worked with on this article, and I were both raised (she in Kyiv, I in Moscow) by parents who were born during that war. For us and so many people of our generation, the war explained why our grandfathers were absent, our grandmothers hoarded odd objects, our parents had fraught relationships to food, and all of our family members seemed at all times to be in a state of hypervigilance. Most of all, the war explained why none of the plans our grandparents had made for their future ever came true. In our generation, the future, as a category, continued to be suspect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Growing up, I never questioned the heroism and special status of Soviet society. It was only as an adult that I came to understand that the war, which ended 22 years before I was born, had recast public morality, valorizing single-minded commitment and self-sacrifice above all else \u2014 above happiness, human connection, creativity, freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many Ukrainians \u2014 even those born after the country gained independence from Moscow\u2019s rule in 1991 \u2014 grew up with much of the same mythology of the Great Patriotic War. Ukraine, which was under German occupation for most of that war, lost some 10 million people. Mila\u2019s surviving grandparents, like mine, celebrated every anniversary of that war\u2019s end but almost never talked about what they had experienced. After the war, the Soviet authorities sent thousands of Ukrainians to the gulag for suspected collaboration with the Germans \u2014 in many cases, as what amounted to punishment for surviving the occupation. Ukrainians never forgot that injury. Both of those World War II stories \u2014 of the heroism of Ukrainians and of the cruelty of Moscow \u2014 inform the way Ukrainians think about the war they are fighting now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/19\/multimedia\/00gessen-wgkv\/00gessen-wgkv-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"A black-and-white photograph of soldiers passing a bombed-out building in the snow. \"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">German soldiers in Kyiv in 1941. World War II had long been held up as the definitive example of wartime suffering. Now that the war with Russia enters its fifth year, it has passed that symbolic threshold.Credit&#8230;Associated Press<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Newer works of history reframe the period as two sides of a coin: German and Soviet occupations of Ukraine, two empires that aimed to enslave Ukrainians \u2014 Germany during World War II, the Soviet Union before and after. And yet, the number four has continued to loom large in collective memory. Now Ukraine\u2019s patriotic war, against Russia, has crossed that threshold, with no end in sight. Russia\u2019s offensive appeared to speed up in December. In February, Ukraine recaptured ground, in its most successful counteroffensive in more than two years. But on the whole, the front line has remained largely static for more than three years. Russia\u2019s apparently overwhelming superiority in manpower and military resources didn\u2019t bring about a swift victory, but neither have the resolve of the Ukrainian people and the Western aid they have received proved enough to stop Russia\u2019s aggression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whatever lies ahead feels as if it will last forever. Ukrainians have organized their lives accordingly. They are living this war in their work, their social lives, their waking and sleeping hours. It is a fundamental orientation of time, values and social relations that will define many future generations of Ukrainian life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By any measure, Ukraine is a profoundly different country now than it was four years ago. At the start of the full-scale invasion, excluding regions that were already occupied by Russia, it had a population of perhaps 36 million people, according to Tymofii Brik, a sociologist and the rector of the Kyiv School of Economics. (Other estimates tend to be higher.) Since then, Brik says, six million have been displaced inside the country and some four million \u2014 mostly women and children \u2014 have left Ukraine. More than 100,000 Ukrainians,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/27\/us\/politics\/russia-ukraine-casualties.html\">troops<\/a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/news.un.org\/en\/story\/2025\/11\/1166343\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">civilians<\/a>, are estimated to have been killed. Millions of people live under occupation in areas Russia controls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/22\/multimedia\/22gessen-hgzb\/22gessen-hgzb-mobileMasterAt3x.jpg?auto=webp&amp;quality=90\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/18\/multimedia\/00gessen-03-jzkq\/00gessen-03-jzkq-mobileMasterAt3x.jpg?auto=webp&amp;quality=90\" alt=\"Huge stacks of sandbags braced against the tall ground-floor windows of a stone building. \"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>In Kyiv, some streets still look as they might have five years ago. Others show extreme damage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When people were fleeing the Russian offensive in the winter of 2022, squeezing onto overcrowded train cars headed west, few imagined that the war would go on for a long time. Either Russia\u2019s tremendous military might or the West\u2019s firm resolve would dictate a fast resolution, it seemed. But four years after that \u2014 and 13 months into the presidency of Donald Trump, who promised to bring the war to an end within 24 hours of his inauguration \u2014 there is no safe home for Ukrainian war refugees to return to. And there is less and less reason even to think about it: The people who stayed in Western Europe have adapted to their new homes, and to the separation from those they left behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhat kind of relationship can we have, with them over there and me back here?\u201d Taras Viazovchenko said when I asked him about the state of his marriage. He got his wife and two children out of Irpin, one of the Kyiv suburbs then under Russian occupation, on March 3, 2022. The wife and kids live in Switzerland now. He has visited once. \u201cShe\u2019s built a life there,\u201d he said. \u201cThe kids speak French to each other, and I don\u2019t understand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like many Ukrainians who remained in the country, Viazovchenko has lived several different lives in the past four years \u2014 lives that he has shared with his parents and some of his friends, but not with his wife and kids. Before the full-scale invasion, Viazovchenko was a yoga instructor and a member of the Irpin City Council, a position he still holds. During the weeks in 2022 when part of Irpin was occupied, he spent every day helping people escape the town. When Russian troops retreated from the Kyiv region, Viazovchenko joined the effort to identify the bodies of people killed in Irpin and neighboring&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/12\/27\/us\/politics\/a-russian-military-unit-killed-dozens-in-bucha-our-investigation-shows.html\">Bucha<\/a>, which has become synonymous with Russian war crimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>People killed during the occupation had been buried in private yards, in group graves, in town parks, often after their bodies were left for days wherever the killing had occurred. Viazovchenko and others exhumed the bodies, interviewed loved ones and witnesses and tried to match remains to descriptions. After several months of this work, Viazovchenko became obsessed. He and his colleagues had been able to identify more than 400 bodies, but several dozen remained. Viazovchenko couldn\u2019t sleep. He couldn\u2019t think of anything else. He kept unzipping the black bags in which the bodies were kept \u2014 or what remained of them after several months in morgues that didn\u2019t consistently have electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/18\/multimedia\/00gessen-10-jzkq\/00gessen-10-jzkq-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"A bearded man, bundled up against the cold, stands waiting for a train.\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Taras Viazovchenko, a yoga teacher before the war, enlisted at age 46. He thinks everyone should join up.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>It took the intervention of visiting mental health professionals for Viazovchenko to get help. He worked on setting up therapy centers for survivors of Russian aggression in different parts of Ukraine. And then last year, at the age of 46, he enlisted. He thinks that everyone should.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To be clear, not everyone agrees. After an initial wave of volunteers immediately after the full-scale invasion, the Ukrainian armed forces have struggled to conscript enough people. People who enlisted four years ago and who are still physically able to serve have been unable to leave the service. Meanwhile, enlistment officers stage daily raids in Ukrainian cities, apprehending potential conscripts and delivering them to military bases. Some escape. At the same time, on this visit in particular, I heard many stories of people who either chose to enlist or submitted to a conscription raid and found peace in the service \u2014 and in no longer trying to evade it. Viazovchenko thinks this is as it should be, and that those who cannot serve at the front should join the war effort in the rear. He complained that, after several years of pooling money for the war effort, parents\u2019 groups have resumed collections for gifts and flowers for teachers. That strikes him as frivolous, as does any pretense of peacetime life. As an example of proper, realistic adjustment, he cited the schools of Kharkiv, many of which have permanently moved to underground bunkers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Underground schools have become<\/strong>&nbsp;symbols of Ukrainian unbreakability, along with warming tents set up in the shadow of unheated high rises. I visited the Kyiv School of Economics, a small, ambitious private university that has managed to draw some outstanding academic talent from both Ukraine and the West. Brik, the rector, excitedly led me to the basement, where the university has created several classrooms, complete with whiteboards. The school schedules only as many classes as can simultaneously convene in the bunker, so that whenever the air-raid alarm sounds, as it does on most days, classes can move down below. Then Brik showed me something else he was proud of: a classroom equipped for a vocational training program, this one in soldering \u2014 a skill newly in demand in the growing drone industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/18\/multimedia\/00gessen-jqpv\/00gessen-jqpv-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"A man wearing a brown sweater sits in a chair looking off to the middle distance. \"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Tymofii Brik, rector of the Kyiv School of Economics, which schedules only as many classes as can simultaneously convene in the school\u2019s underground bunker.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Most recently, Brik told me, the university had moved dozens of students out of apartment buildings that had lost power and heat and into hotel rooms. I wondered what, with his ingenuity and energy, he would be capable of in peacetime. Russia\u2019s war \u2014 a war for the return to an imperial past \u2014 has always been a war against Ukraine\u2019s future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI imagine that if there were no war, I\u2019d get another Ph.D., in neurobiology,\u201d another acquaintance, Lena Samoilenko, told me. Her first Ph.D. is in mathematics (multidimensional spaces, to be exact). She got it before Russia annexed Crimea and Russian-backed forces occupied the small town in the east where she\u2019d grown up. When that phase of the war began, in 2014, Samoilenko was 28 and living in Kyiv. She started volunteering, helping some people to escape the Russians and others to survive under occupation. She spent many years organizing aid and reporting about the war \u2014 and then it came to Kyiv.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s Groundhog Day every day,\u201d she said. \u201cYou had your ear to the ground every day, listening for tanks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was only later that night that I realized that it was, in fact, Groundhog Day, Feb. 2. It was also four years to the day since I first&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/dispatch\/a-moment-of-excruciating-anticipation-in-kyiv\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">wrote<\/a>&nbsp;about Samoilenko. Back then, I had come to Kyiv \u2014 a city I had often visited \u2014 to cover its preparations for the Russian invasion. I had sought out Samoilenko because she had written a Facebook post decrying the idea that anyone can adequately prepare for war. While most people she knew were packing go bags and laying in supplies to survive a short-term crisis, Samoilenko was girding herself and her family for a more fundamental change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/22\/multimedia\/22gessen-tvzq\/00gessen-tvzq-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"A woman wearing a black V-neck top considers her reflection in an oval-shaped mirror. \"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Lena Samoilenko saw early on that the war would not pass quickly. She was recently promoted to staff sergeant in the Ukrainian armed forces.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2022, Samoilenko started to help out in Kherson, a port city in southern Ukraine that spent more than six months under occupation. After Russian troops retreated, remaining residents \u2014 a disproportionate number of them poor, older, disabled \u2014 needed basic supplies, medicine and care. Samoilenko raised money, recruited volunteers, bought a car and set up shop in a working-class neighborhood of the city. In June 2023, Russian forces apparently&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2023\/06\/16\/world\/europe\/ukraine-kakhovka-dam-collapse.html\">blew up<\/a>&nbsp;the nearby Kakhovka dam, unleashing a deadly flood, which created even more need for Samoilenko\u2019s work. Meanwhile, her marriage ended, and her ex-husband, a poet and musician, joined the military. \u201cEven if he hadn\u2019t joined up, he might have met a younger woman,\u201d Samoilenko said. It\u2019s just that the war has been going on for a long time \u2014 long enough for people to fall in and out of love, among other things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s been going on so long that the war itself has changed in profound ways. It started with bomber planes and tanks, but it is continuing primarily with drones \u2014 and the drone technology keeps changing. Military personnel have had to train and retrain. So have journalists. On a Sunday afternoon, Mila and I attended a training session for journalists at a former Soviet Young Pioneer camp outside Kyiv. A group of people who became war correspondents four years ago \u2014 before that, many of them wrote about politics or social issues, or produced movies \u2014 were learning how to detect and avoid drones. They looked for cover, pursued by the devices\u2019 beehive-like hum, but how can you dodge weapons that are capable of turning corners, hovering in wait, and going into open doors and windows? At one point, a journalist dropped to her knees in the snow and yelled: \u201cThat\u2019s it! I\u2019m fucked.\u201d<br><br>The drones made it harder for Samoilenko to continue working in Kherson. She could no longer use the car, because drones would follow the few vehicles traveling the city\u2019s largely deserted back roads, and the distances she needed to cover were too great to travel by foot regularly. So she, too, joined the military. The day we met up, she had been promoted to staff sergeant. \u201cLet\u2019s drink to that,\u201d she said, in a way that made it clear this wasn\u2019t a milestone she\u2019d ever hoped to celebrate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In her past life, Samoilenko was a prominent figure in Kyiv\u2019s cultural scene. She organized a poetry festival, and she loved to dress up for events. \u201cAnd I\u2019m spending the last years of my youth in a dimly lit office space with people I wouldn\u2019t ordinarily choose to socialize with.\u201d Like other service members, Samoilenko can\u2019t tell me exactly what she does, but she is based in Kyiv, a couple of hundred miles from the active fighting, which means that she doesn\u2019t get supplemental frontline pay. From her old life, she still has her remote jobs as a consultant, which allow her to rent an apartment near her base, and some floor-length velvet dresses that she keeps in a closet there as something like a talisman. Someday she hopes to wear them again, to travel and to walk by the sea \u2014 these are the things she needs to feel happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While we talked, Ukrainian, American and Russian representatives continued their endless negotiations \u2014 negotiations about negotiations that, Trump kept promising, would bring an end to the war. Meanwhile, 2025 had been the deadliest year for civilians since the war started. The Americans said that Russia had agreed to stop hitting Ukrainian energy infrastructure, for a week. The agreement didn\u2019t hold. \u201cIt\u2019s been so cold for the last month that you keep feeling that it must warm up soon,\u201d Samoilenko said. \u201cBut there is still February, and March in Kyiv is cold too. There is no reason to think that it will get warmer. And nothing gets easier, even though we\u2019ve been through so much.\u201d Even the catastrophic early days of the full-scale invasion felt more hopeful, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/18\/multimedia\/00gessen-16-jzkq\/00gessen-16-jzkq-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"A tattoo just below a woman\u2019s clavicle shows words and a few little lines. \"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Lena Samoilenko\u2019s tattoo shows the name of the aid organization she helped to found: Zoria Nadia, or Star Hope. The group supports the basic needs of people in the Kherson region.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The way we think&nbsp;<\/strong>about the future is also, usually, the way we think about the past. The inescapable sense that this war is forever has compelled Ukrainians to reframe their history \u2014 including the history of World War II \u2014 as one of eternal war against Russia. I saw and heard this narrative seemingly everywhere on this visit, including in Independence Square in the center of Kyiv, long a site of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/news-desk\/the-story-of-ukraine-through-its-many-monuments\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">memorials<\/a>&nbsp;both permanent and makeshift. For years, these were memorials to revolutions, particularly those of the Orange Revolution of 2004 and the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, for which the square served as the main stage. But the memorials currently on display in the square tell a different story: There is an exhibit devoted to the 1991 protests against the Soviet regime, now reframed as a revolt against Russian imperialism; a permanent memorial to the people who died in 2014, both during the revolution and in the war in the east; and a growing memorial to Ukrainian fighters who have died since 2022, each of them marked with a small Ukrainian flag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What struck me most about this current memorial is its scale: There is a multitude of flags, but most are tiny, guaranteeing that the memorial can keep expanding for a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Paradoxically, thinking of the war as eternal gives Ukraine some room for negotiating with Russia, and gives Ukrainians a modicum of hope. No one expects the current negotiations to bring permanent peace, but a truce that gives Russia domain over parts of eastern Ukraine may be acceptable when one compares it with the outcome of World War II \u2014 the Russian occupation of all of contemporary Ukraine, including lands that had belonged to Poland before that war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/22\/multimedia\/22gessen-06-jzkq\/00gessen-06-jzkq-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"Framed photographs of young men peek out from a pile of snow. \"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A memorial in Independence Square in Kyiv started out as an improvised tribute to fallen soldiers. It has grown to something much larger, with room to get bigger still.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>If the war is eternal, it must also be all-encompassing, just as Taras Viazovchenko told me. All of Ukraine is the front. The country\u2019s westernmost major city, Lviv, which has been subjected to only intermittent assault, has transformed itself into a city that visibly lives and breathes the war. A large stand in Market Square, updated every morning at 9, displays the photos and biographies of soldiers who will be buried that day. Typically at 11, cars carrying flag-draped coffins pull up to the Peter and Paul church, one of the largest in the city. A military band assembles in front to play while coffins are loaded back into the vehicles. They are then driven to Market Square, where the mayor of Lviv pays his respects as a trumpeter, dressed in red, plays \u201cIl Silenzio\u201d by Nini Rosso. Every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But perhaps the biggest change the war has brought to Lviv is that the city has become a world capital of amputations and prosthetics. Together, centers with names like Unbroken and Superhumans serve thousands of people at a time. In all, some 100,000 Ukrainians are estimated to have lost limbs in this war, so far. At Unbroken, I walked down a hallway filled with photographs and architectural renderings of rehab centers, vocational training schools, new surgical clinics and on and on \u2014 that the organization either has recently built or plans to build. At Superhumans, I heard about centers the organization is opening in other cities \u2014 including one in Odesa that\u2019s being built partly underground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These centers are, of course, proud of their work: their technological expertise, their range of rehabilitation services, the speed with which they get people standing and walking and being self-sufficient again. At Superhumans, I interviewed two men who seemed preternaturally cheerful, full of hope for the future; both were fairly newly in love. Each of them was missing both legs above the knee \u2014 one because a rocket hit the trench where he was operating a machine gun, the other because an attack caused the loaded drone he was carrying to explode in his hands. This man is also missing one hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/18\/multimedia\/00gessen-20-jzkq\/00gessen-20-jzkq-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"A man with a prosthetic leg walks on a treadmill while another person, whose foot has been amputated, performs an exercise while lying down.\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Lviv has turned itself into an international center for amputation and prostheses.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/18\/multimedia\/00gessen-21-jzkq\/00gessen-21-jzkq-mobileMasterAt3x.jpg?auto=webp&amp;quality=90\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/18\/multimedia\/00gessen-22-jzkq\/00gessen-22-jzkq-mobileMasterAt3x.jpg?auto=webp&amp;quality=90\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>At the Unbroken rehabilitation center, a young woman receives care after a car crash. Vasyl Zakharchuk, at the Superhumans center, lost his legs but has recently found love.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This war, like the great war before it, has extracted and normalized extraordinary sacrifice. It demands that everyone serve and everyone be a hero. I talked with a lawyer who said he was defending more than 50 of the thousands of people accused of collaborating with the Russians \u2014 some, he said, because they didn\u2019t resist occupiers who entered their houses, others because they continued to run businesses under occupation and paid taxes to the occupying authorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>War poses impossible choices, Samoilenko said \u2014 \u201clike, when you are fleeing the advancing Russian troops, whether to force your grandmother, who has dementia, to come with you. And then you have to live with that choice, whatever the decision that you made.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>War turns writers, artists, engineers and house painters into soldiers. \u201cAnd when people come back from the war, they are going to want to have a say in how the country is run,\u201d Anton Liagusha, chair of the newly formed master\u2019s program in memory studies and public history at the Kyiv School of Economics, told me. \u201cSome of them will be in government. In the history of the world, I am not aware of any case of a country that is run by military officers that is democratic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/18\/multimedia\/00gessen-23-jzkq\/00gessen-23-jzkq-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"Two elaborately tattooed hands adjust the mechanism in a prosthetic foot. \"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A technician at the Unbroken rehabilitation center in Lviv. Such centers are expanding to other cities and moving underground.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>This is the most painful irony forced by the war. Ukrainians rose up against Russian aggression in order to protect their democracy \u2014 by any measure, one of the most vibrant and robust in the post-Soviet space. But over four years of martial law, military censorship, suspended elections, and mobilization both legal and psychological, Ukraine has become progressively less democratic. This was part of Russia\u2019s goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the course of the war, I\u2019ve heard Ukrainians talk less about democracy. It\u2019s understandable: This is a war for independence, and everything else is secondary. But in many ways, Ukrainians have never been less independent from Russia. It\u2019s Russia that determines when and if Ukrainians sleep, whether they can move through their cities and whether they have running water, light and heat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Lviv, I met Mariana Mamonova, who works as a therapist at the Unbroken center. She began the war as a military doctor in Mariupol, where she worked through the first couple of months of the siege of that city. In April 2022, just weeks after she learned she was pregnant, she was taken prisoner. She spent almost seven months in a notorious Russian prisoner camp near the occupied Ukrainian town of Olenivka before being released as part of a prisoner exchange. Less than a week later, Mamonova gave birth. She retrained as a therapist, and the skills she learned, she told me, saved her life and her marriage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/18\/multimedia\/00gessen-24-jzkq\/00gessen-24-jzkq-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"A woman wearing jeans and a turtleneck sits on the edge of a bed and looks toward a nearby window. \"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Mariana Mamonova was newly pregnant when she was taken captive; she gave birth shortly after being released. She now works as a therapist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>When I told Mamonova that I was trying to describe Ukraine\u2019s current predicament, she compared it to being a prisoner of war. \u201cIt is a kind of captivity,\u201d she said. \u201cYou are in bondage. Russia tortures its prisoners with cold \u2014 cold and hunger. And here it is the same.\u201d Continuing the comparison, she likened Kyiv, where many apartments have no heat or electricity and almost no one has enough, to solitary confinement \u2014 not because Kyiv is isolated but because it\u2019s a place where even more people are suffering from the cold than elsewhere in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet another round of U.S.-led negotiations on the Russian-Ukrainian war was in the planning stages. A day before Mamonova and I talked, Russia had violated the ostensible temporary ban on targeting the energy infrastructure. Kyiv had spent much of the previous 24 hours without electricity and under an air-raid alert. It wasn\u2019t the first such day, or the second, or the fifth, and it wasn\u2019t clear that anyone outside Ukraine took much notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This, too, reminded Mamonova of Russian captivity. \u201cYou scream and no one can hear you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>More on the war in Ukraine<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/15\/opinion\/ukraine-war-drones.html\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/15\/opinion\/ukraine-war-drones.html\">Opinion | Nataliya Gumenyuk<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/15\/opinion\/ukraine-war-drones.html\">When Will This War End? The Question Is Meaningless.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/15\/opinion\/ukraine-war-drones.html\">Feb. 15, 2026<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/01\/opinion\/trump-zelensky-putin-ukraine-russia-war-us.html\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/01\/opinion\/trump-zelensky-putin-ukraine-russia-war-us.html\">Opinion | Philip H. Gordon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/01\/opinion\/trump-zelensky-putin-ukraine-russia-war-us.html\">A Trump Security Guarantee Is Empty, Mr. Zelensky<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/01\/opinion\/trump-zelensky-putin-ukraine-russia-war-us.html\">Jan. 1, 2026<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/12\/02\/opinion\/ukraine-russia-peace-plan-business-deal.html\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/12\/02\/opinion\/ukraine-russia-peace-plan-business-deal.html\">Opinion | Bret Stephens<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/12\/02\/opinion\/ukraine-russia-peace-plan-business-deal.html\">Giving In to Putin Would Give Up More Than Ukraine<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/12\/02\/opinion\/ukraine-russia-peace-plan-business-deal.html\">Dec. 2, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The Times is committed to publishing&nbsp;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/01\/31\/opinion\/letters\/letters-to-editor-new-york-times-women.html\"><em>a diversity of letters<\/em><\/a><em>&nbsp;to the editor. We\u2019d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some&nbsp;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/help.nytimes.com\/hc\/en-us\/articles\/115014925288-How-to-submit-a-letter-to-the-editor\"><em>tips<\/em><\/a><em>. And here\u2019s our email:&nbsp;<\/em><a href=\"mailto:letters@nytimes.com\"><em>letters@nytimes.com<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Follow the New York Times Opinion section on&nbsp;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/nytopinion\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Facebook<\/em><\/a><em>,&nbsp;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/nytopinion\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Instagram<\/em><\/a><em>,&nbsp;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@nytopinion\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><em>TikTok<\/em><\/a><em>,&nbsp;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/nytopinion.nytimes.com\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Bluesky<\/em><\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.whatsapp.com\/channel\/0029VaN8tdZ5vKAGNwXaED0M\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><em>WhatsApp<\/em><\/a><em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.threads.net\/@nytopinion\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Threads<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mila Teshaieva is a Ukrainian photographer and film director based in Berlin. Her latest documentary, \u201cShards of Light,\u201d is about survivors of the Russian occupation of Bucha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>M. Gessen is an Opinion columnist for The Times. They won a George Polk Award for opinion writing in 2024. They are the author of 11 books, including \u201cThe Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia,\u201d which won the National Book Award in 2017.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back to News Wall of Remembrance, Kyiv, Ukraine (c) 2026 Planet Earth Foundation, All Rights Reserved The End Of Civilization As We Knew it, Part Thirty Five UPDATE: Linked below is a new production for the fourth anniversary of the full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. It features reflections by Keith Blume, founder of Planet [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,54],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17783"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17783"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17844,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17783\/revisions\/17844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}