Siobhán O'Grady, Kostiantyn Khudov and Heidi Levine
For nearly 18 months, Ukraine has stood against its Russian invaders — rallying support for its troops by embracing last year’s battlefield victories in the Kyiv, Kharkiv and Kherson regions.
Those wins carried beleaguered Ukrainians through a winter of airstrikes on civilian infrastructure and a brutal and symbolic battle for Bakhmut, the eastern city that fell to the Russians in May.
Throughout, Ukrainian officials and their western partners hyped up a coming counteroffensive — one that, buoyed by a flood of new weapons and training, they hoped would turn the tide of the war.
But two months after Ukraine went on the attack, with little visible progress on the front and a relentless, bloody summer across the country, the narrative of unity and endless perseverance has begun to fray.
The number of dead — untold thousands — increases daily. Millions are displaced and see no chance of returning home. In every corner of the country, civilians are exhausted from a spate of recent Russian attacks — including strikes on a historic cathedral in Odessa, a residential building in Kryvyi Rih and a blood transfusion center in the Kharkiv region.
This week, two Russian missiles hit a single block in the eastern town of Pokrovsk — where an evacuation train regularly picks up people fleeing front-line areas nearby — killing civilians and emergency workers who rushed there to save them.
Ukrainians, much in need of good news, are simply not getting any.
Music teacher Svitlana Zhdanova, 75, was sitting in her living room in Pokrovsk on Tuesday evening when the missiles rammed into her block, shattering all her glassware and breaking her piano. Not knowing where else to go, she cleaned up the apartment she has lived in since 1969 and decided to stay.
Raisa Rybalchenko, 78, lived on the fourth floor of a building badly damaged in the double strike. She was in the kitchen when the first blast hit. Soon after, five men banged on the door, shouting “Is anyone alive?” She called back that she was.
One of them carried her down the stairs. Soon after, the next strike hit. At least nine people have died so far, and dozens of others were wounded.
On Wednesday, Rybalchenko was among the crowds of shocked people helping board up windows and sort through the remnants of their lives. She hopes the government will repair her apartment. “But right now, I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t have any idea what is next. I’m just in shock.”
In Smila, a small city in central Ukraine, baker Alla Blyzniuk, 42, said she sells sweets for funeral receptions daily as parents prepare to bury their children killed on the front hundreds of miles away.
Before, she said, even when the situation was painful, “people were united.” They volunteered, made meals for one another and delivered food to soldiers. Now, she said, there’s a sense of collective “disappointment.”
Blyzniuk also lives in fear that her husband or two sons of fighting age will be mobilized. She has already noticed that far fewer men walk the streets of her city than before. Ukraine does not disclose its military casualty counts, but everyone shares stories, she said, of new soldiers at the front lasting just two to three days.
“The defenders of our country should be professionals,” she said. “I’m really sad,” she added. “We Ukrainians did not deserve this destiny.”
In the Donetsk region, an Estonian Ukrainian soldier who goes by the call sign Suzie works at a stabilization point where wounded soldiers are treated before being transferred to hospitals in safer towns. On a recent day, he helped organize body bags that would soon be used in the makeshift morgue that already reeked of death.
Sometimes, he said, soldiers’ bodies are so blown apart they have to use two or three body bags to contain them. There are times when a soldier is returned with “just 15 percent of the body,” Suzie said. “I never saw so much blood before.”
“It is such a hard price for freedom,” he added.
These scenes are unfolding a world away from Kyiv, the capital, where civilians — somewhat protected by strengthened air defenses — often hardly even react to air raid sirens. But even here, painful signs of the war lurk everywhere.
On park benches, freshly wounded soldiers being treated in the capital sip coffee and smoke cigarettes before returning to their hospital beds. They watch as civilians stroll by, dogs and babies in tow.
Viktor, 34, a former restaurant waiter, is among them. He came under mortar attack in a trench on the front line in Zaporizhzhia last week. His wrist was split open and his face — now covered in scabs — was sprayed with shrapnel. His knee was also hit.
Now, in Kyiv, he sees bars and restaurants are packed and the city hums with traffic. A group of children walked by, craning their necks to look at his injuries. Viktor, who asked that his last name not be disclosed for security reasons, considered himself lucky to at least be able to walk.
Many other men in the same park are missing limbs, and Viktor’s Facebook is flooded with photos of soldiers who did not make it home at all. The images haunt him so much he no longer likes to check his phone.
“It’s too depressing,” he said.
The latest fight has been grueling. One day, it took his unit seven hours to move forward just 400 meters, he said — about a quarter of a mile. “And that was quite fast.”
He and his wife, who is also serving in the military, were due to see each other that afternoon for the first time since he was wounded. “I’ll probably cry,” he said. Once he is healed, he said, he will go back to the front.
Ruslan Proektor, 52, lost his leg this summer when he stepped on a mine fighting in the east. He was immediately wounded again when the soldier trying to carry him to safety stepped on another. Now that he is recovering in Kyiv, his wife, Anna Oliinyk, 47, said she wants “the counteroffensive to be more active.”
“We’ve got all these guys coming back from the front line without limbs,” she said, looking at her husband, who was in a wheelchair. “I want the price they paid to be reasonable. Otherwise it’s just useless, what they went through.”
Given the choice now, Proektor said, he would not sign up again. “They are taking everyone and sending them to the front line without proper preparation,” he said. “I don’t want to be in the company of unmotivated people.”
Others like him are mainly enraged at Russia — but they also aren’t afraid to criticize Ukraine.
Last week, President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that a government audit of recruitment centers discovered “revolting” practices among corrupt officials.
One soldier who goes by the call sign “Positive” and is recovering at a hospital in Kyiv after suffering concussions in Kherson and Bakhmut, said people profiting off the war “should be sent to the front line.”
Yulia Paltseva, 36, a receptionist in Kyiv, said she has been shocked by how residents of Kyiv still party and socialize. Her boyfriend is at the front and will soon be transferred to fight near Bakhmut, she said.
“All those dancing and smiling people should remember that there are those soldiers like my boyfriend in the trenches without any rotations and being shelled every day,” Paltseva said.
As for the counteroffensive, she said: “Our expectations were higher. If it’s going on, it’s going slow.”
In Kryvyi Rih, doctor Valeriya Maslyanyk, 58, sighed as she looked up at her damaged apartment this week — just one entrance over from a section of the building destroyed in a strike last month. A gaping hole sits where her neighbors used to live. Outside, a pile of flowers and stuffed animals memorializes them.
Already thinking ahead to winter, she fears her windows will not be replaced by the time temperatures start to drop. She is tired and sees no end in sight. “I want to go to the sea,” she said wistfully. “But the Russians took all of our seas.”
Across the street, construction worker Volodymyr Pravednyk, 46, stopped to observe the wreckage. His sister lives in the same apartment block but escaped unscathed.
Pravednyk said that he fears that the attack was “just the beginning” of more strikes on this industrial city. He lives around the corner, and each time he passes the ruined building, he said, “I feel sorrow for us Ukrainian civilians who have to suffer so much.”
O’Grady and Khudov reported from Kyiv, Kryvyi Rih and Smila. Levine reported from Pokrovsk and elsewhere in the Donetsk region. Mykhailo Melnychenko contributed to this report.
What to know about Ukraine’s counteroffensive
The latest: The Ukrainian military has launched a long-anticipated counteroffensive against occupying Russian forces, opening a crucial phase in the war aimed at restoring Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty and preserving Western support in its fight against Moscow.
The fight: Ukrainian troops have intensified their attacks on the front line in the southeast region, according to multiple individuals in the country’s armed forces, in a significant push toward Russian-occupied territory.
The front line: The Washington Post has mapped out the 600-mile front line between Ukrainian and Russian forces.
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