The paradox in Ukraine is that the closer we get to peace, the farther we are away from it. Russian attacks on civilians are increasing exponentially with the peace negotiations. While journalists cover civilian casualties in Kyiv, those in the south and east of the country are rarely mentioned. Zelensky is successful in conveying his military needs to the media, but has had less joy with galvanising international support for his civilian dead. His government is conspicuously losing the information war compared to Gaza which has managed to harness global outrage for its dying children.
In September, I take the overnight train from Kyiv to Odesa. Oksana, a lighting shop owner, shares my compartment and is delighted to be going on holiday. To emphasise why, she shows me a photo of her glass-strewn Kyiv apartment damaged in the attack of 29th August in which twenty-two civilians died.
“A thousand apartments were hit that night,” she says. “I’ve applied for compensation but don’t expect to get much. The government doesn’t take care of the people any more because the American money is gone.”
She’s renting a flat in Odesa with her husband and is cock-a-hoop that it’s next to the best beach, Arcadia. “We try to be happy these days,” she says. “We only think of the present.”
When it comes to her opinion on peace talks, she tells me how anxious she is for an end to the war, even at the cost of losing the Donbas region.
“We lose more land every day. We must just say stop, enough, before more people die. What I ask from our government is wisdom. Be realistic. Are you waiting for Putin to die? He’s not going to. When he was in China, he was talking to Xi about transplants.”
I arrive in Odesa not long after sunrise and walk along a boulevard lined with white plane trees towards my hotel. The hotel receptionist, Valeria, is bleary-eyed from a sleep interrupted by the sound of rockets, Shaheds and Ukrainian defence systems. I check the news and see that, as well as the assault on Odesa, Kyiv has undergone the biggest air bombardment since the war began. The Cabinet of Ministers building has been hit and three civilians have died, one of them a child. As usual, there are no images of the casualties to enable the world to connect with the atrocity.
At the Opera House, models are being photographed and a woman is dancing for a video, giving the sense of a stylish city unbowed. The Black Sea is no more than half an hour’s walk from the city centre and the pale-pocked sands feel like an oasis from the suffering. Elderly women are selling king prawns in tubs along the beach roads and holidaymakers are happily swimming in spite of the fractional risk of encountering a mine. Not everything is picture perfect — the wooden stairs to the vantage points are in a parlous state of disrepair.
By night, the central restaurants and bars are alive with tanned boulevardiers. As the sky darkens, I pass an arcade shooting gallery, the rifles resting unused as if no one can bear to lift one. The midnight curfew brings silence. All that can be heard is the susurration of roads being sprayed with water.
The next morning, the minibus leaves Odesa and ferries me down steep slopes into the dockland underbelly of the city. It’s like hurtling from heaven into hell. Many warehouses have been destroyed, shards of glass clinging to the window frames like stalactites. An apartment block has been pierced by a rocket, the familiar bruised hole of its entry eyelashed with black. The Russians have a sentimental fondness for the old city and unleash their barrages on the port instead.
In Zaporizhia, my translator, Alexei, takes me to the News Agency South which specialises in providing news on southern Ukraine including the Russian-occupied territories. The occupied regions are under so much control and surveillance it’s impossible to calculate the number of civilian deaths. Russia is also trying to centralise communication through Max messenger, making it harder for Ukrainians stranded in those regions to contact the outside world. The director, Svetlana Zalizetskaya, speaks of the many “waiters: in the occupied territories praying that they can wait it out until liberation. Svetlana herself believes that Ukrainian land will eventually be de-occupied, but “not any time soon.”
During the night, a storm is billowing outside and in a calm spell I can hear the guttural putter of a drone passing through the sky. There are explosions in the distance, but a mosquito is buzzing around my head and, what with the blitzkrieg of thunder, I don’t trust my own ears until the air attack is confirmed with an unearthly echoing thud like the grating closure of gates. It’s only by being here that you can feel the danger — “you have to feel it on your skin” as the Ukrainians say. Sleepless in Zaporizhia, I think to myself ruefully.
In the morning, I find out that several houses in Zaporizhia were struck and one woman was injured. We drive south into the countryside past a destroyed power transformer factory, one forlorn blind in an empty window waving us on our way. The security situation in the villages I last visited in April has worsened. For the first time, Russian drones have reached the village of Zorya.
As for the besieged Vyshetarasivka, their sole water pump has been destroyed. A huge Russian Grad, drone and artillery attack rained down on Vyshetarasivka on 7th September and sixty buildings were damaged with one villager killed. Organising the funeral was a challenge in itself as undertakers in the district were too afraid to come. Russian soldiers are now trying to sneak across the dried-out land of the former Kakhovka reservoir at night. The Head of Utilities has mentioned to a friend not to be surprised if they wake up one day to a Russian flag. Oleksander, the community leader, is under so much stress he is undergoing tests for a heart condition.
In Myrove, I meet a community activist, Maryna, who was in Odesa on the night of the strikes. Her husband said drily to her at the time, “At least if we die, we’ll die in a beautiful place.” They both sought shelter in their hotel bathroom, her husband sitting on the toilet seat. It’s impossible not to see the black humour in courting such an ignominious death.
A short drive away, a volunteer, Olena, is carrying supplies out to a soldier’s van while looking after her young grandson. She is adamant about the war’s resolution.
“Not one millimetre of land should go to Russia. Many of our boys are dead in the fields. They’ll remain there forever, disappeared, as the Russians won’t care. They should be buried with honour.”
We shuttle past fields of wilting sunflowers. A road-killed fox is being pecked by a crow. Foxes are on the increase in the villages where they hunt for chickens due to drought killing their usual prey. At the local school in Nastasivka, however, the laughter of children lifts the spirits. Despite a Russian drone reaching Nastasivka in May, there was enough confidence to reopen the school for the first time since the war, rotating the students between online and in-person classes. Nastasivka is in the yellow zone rather than the ultra-dangerous red zone.
In an office, we meet Gregory, a soldier who was badly injured in Avdiivka in December 2023, but miraculously survived. He has eleven pieces of shrapnel in his body and still has excruciating pain. On the day of his injury, he and a comrade were trying to evacuate a wounded soldier when they heard a drone.
“We tried to scatter,” he says, “but three birds dropped six eggs on me.”
A bird in military parlance is a drone and an egg is munitions. Many Ukrainians blame Donald Trump for the massive loss of life in Avdiivka since he was responsible for blocking Biden’s Ukraine funding bill in late 2023.
The following morning as we leave Zaporizhia, watermelons are being sold at the side of the road. A perfume shop is reopening after a missile blast and balloons are waving in celebration. There is optimism in the air after a quiet night, but life is different in the red-zone village of Vyvodove. A series of explosions resounds from the direction of the river. Mykola, the school caretaker, shows us the tattered wing of an exploded drone that he found yesterday. A local leader, Vasily, arrives with fresh news about more drones obliterating the water pump.
Further down the road is the red-zone city of Marhanets. There are apple trees on the outskirts, the split white flesh of their fruit upturned at the roadside. The stucco facades are flecked with shrapnel marks and the sunny streets are eerily deserted. We meet up with a school vice-principal, Maryna, who lives in Vyshetarasivka and was shocked by Sunday’s brutal strikes on her village. There is a sense of dark forces gathering at the gates and, while the residents of Marhanets and Vyshetarasivka are bravely standing their ground, it seems they cannot resist forever.
Ukraine … is fighting for the right to independence and freedom for the whole of Europe
It is getting dark when we arrive back in Zaporizhia. We join journalist, Anna Chuprina, in a basement restaurant and order some palyanyzzya, Ukrainian pizza. When I ask Anna about peace, she answers, “There’s nothing I can say about peace. I can’t argue against the allies’ plans as they are so far away from my fantasies. Real peace will only come when Europe destroys Russia economically, militarily or politically. If Europe is too hesitant to do it themselves, let them supply us with the weapons to do it. Let’s destroy all the oil depots, so Russia can no longer finance the war.”
She is particularly incensed at Nato members sending forces to defend Polish airspace when they refuse to assist Ukraine. Her home neighbourhood is a frequent target.
“When I can’t sleep, I go to my sister’s apartment,” she explains. “Just because it’s a different place, I convince myself I’m safe – though I’m probably not.”
While some Kyivites desire peace at any price, the frontiers people of the south and east of Ukraine tend not to be so placatory. Stoicism helps them withstand the Russian military machine, but the problem is that stoicism is counterproductive when it comes to gaining international sympathy. If Ukrainians can circulate iconic images of their personal suffering, Europe and even Trump’s USA might be moved to help them further. Ukraine, after all, is fighting for the right to independence and freedom for the whole of Europe. In the light of all this civilian terror, Europe must stand up to Russia.
