Ukraine: The Year Ahead

Nearly four years on from Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukrainians are understandably weary of war. The brutal Russian onslaught, the drone and missile attacks, men, women and children killed and maimed, the power and water outages, and the slow, relentless advance of Russia’s forces in the east. It has all taken a heavy toll. The optimism of the first year, when Ukrainian forces rolled back Russia’s armies and liberated swathes of territory, has faded. Hopes for victory on the battlefield no longer seem credible.

A Ukrainian army recruitment poster:

"We prepare for any scenario"

Especially wounding is the betrayal by Donald Trump’s America. The fears a year ago about what a Trump presidency would mean for US support for Ukraine have been far exceeded by the reality. As they defend their country, facing Russian missile attacks night after night, Ukrainians have been subjected to the grotesque spectacle of Trump humiliating their president, blaming Ukraine for the outbreak of the war, and giving the red-carpet treatment to Putin. Trump has tried to exploit Ukrainians’ sufferings as an opportunity to extort access to the country’s mineral wealth. Meanwhile, Ukrainian leaders have had to bite their lips and abase themselves before the unscrupulous US president. US funding for Ukraine has been cut off, and Trump has seemed more interested in extracting economic advantages for himself and his family from his special relationship with the war criminal Putin.

There seems little prospect of Trump’s peace efforts bearing fruit. Unwilling to put pressure on Putin, the US president has instead repeatedly piled the pressure on Ukraine to make concessions. In the notorious meeting in the Oval Office in February, Trump claimed that President Zelensky did not hold any cards. A remarkably disingenuous assertion, given that Trump himself was intent on taking away the cards that Zelensky held. Yet despite Trump’s efforts to bully the Ukrainian president into submission, as 2025 draws to a close, it appears that Ukraine in fact has more cards than Trump had realised.

Crucially, Europe, along with Canada, has stood firm in its support for Ukraine, finding a way to ensure that the country’s budget will continue to be funded for at least the next two years. Secondly, Ukraine has massively stepped up its own armaments production, including of its own long-range weapons capable of hitting targets deep inside Russia with no need for permission from anyone. And Russia is facing its own problems. The economic toll of the war is increasingly weighing on the country. Wars do not always end due to decisive victories on the battlefield. Sometimes they end because one or both sides are economically and socially exhausted. Ukraine cannot count on an economic or political crisis in Russia bringing a halt to the aggression. But the longer the war goes on, with the sustained pain it is causing Russia, neither can such an outcome be ruled out.

Despite much bluster from the Kremlin, and exaggerated claims of advances and breakthroughs, Russia’s battlefield progress remains glacially slow and costly in terms of Russian lives. And in some sectors, such as Kupyansk in the north and around Pokrovsk, Ukrainian forces have launched successful local counter-attacks, regaining territory. Russia is not winning this war. If Zelensky, bolstered by the support of his European allies, can stand firm in the face of Trump’s bullying, a much better outcome could still be possible.

Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials frequently say that they trust in the armed forces of Ukraine. That is a good maxim. Ukraine’s defenders have far exceeded all expectations. The greater question is whether Ukrainian society has the stomach to continue the fight. I am not Ukrainian, and, while I spend much time in the country, I do not have to face the horror and heartache of losing loved ones. I only have to endure the frequent air raid warnings for relatively short periods. No one other than Ukrainians themselves can say whether they are ready to persevere in face of Russia’s ongoing aggression. The Ukrainian armed forces have faced severe manpower problems this past year. And Ukrainian society shows marked reluctance to accept its young men being drafted into the army. Yet Ukrainians overwhelmingly say they reject submission to Putin’s demands.

With Europe’s support and with the bravery and skill of its armed forces, Ukraine can out-fight the Russian aggressor. Russia is experiencing ever grater strain, not least from Ukraine’s long-range strikes against its energy infrastructure that have been significantly stepped up in the past few months. Ukrainians have the means. They have surprised the world before. If they have the will, they may yet prevail.

Moldova: A divided country

I had first visited Moldova in July 2022, travelling down from Iaşi (pronounced Yash), in Romania, and spending a couple of days in Chişinău before heading to Odessa. That was my first visit to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country that February. In the absence of direct flights to Ukraine due to the war, Moldova has become one of the main entry points into the country. Dozens of buses travel from Chişinău to Odessa every day, most people coming straight out of the airport and on to a bus. Refugees visiting their homes, women and children reuniting with their husbands and fathers who are not allowed to leave Ukraine.

I had not fully appreciated Chişinău on that first visit (see post of 23 July 2023). My perspective had been distorted by my arrival at the central bus station, situated in the heart of the city’s sprawling central market, a somewhat rundown neighbourhood, bustling during the daytime, but almost empty and rather forbidding in the evenings, when the market has packed up for the night. To get to my hotel, I had to pass along a derelict street of abandoned, broken buildings. I was in Moldova again for a couple of weeks in the autumn of 2024. On this occasion, I had the opportunity to visit other parts of the country, as well as Chişinău. I learned to appreciate Chişinău this time, its well-tended, shady parks, its cafes under the trees, its fine restaurants.

I was back again in the summer of 2025, passing through on my way down to Odessa, and spending a few days on my return. This time I spent a couple of days in breakaway Transnistria, the Administrative-Territorial Units of the Left Bank of the Dniester, as it is officially known in Moldova, or the Pridnestrovian (“by the Dniester”) Moldavian Republic, or just Pridnestrovie, as it is called by the unrecognised separatist state strung out along the Dniester river in eastern Moldova. In light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I had some qualms about visiting a territory under Russian control. On my visit to Moldova the previous autumn, I had been to the security zone along the ceasefire line separating Transnistria from government-controlled Moldova. On that occasion, I was on the side of the zone under Moldovan control, but getting there meant passing through a checkpoint manned by Russian soldiers, part of the trilateral peacekeeping force comprising soldiers from Moldova, Transnistria and Russia.

The House of Soviets, with Lenin bust, Tiraspol

The left, east bank of the Dniester split away from the rest of Moldova as the Soviet Union broke up at the beginning of the 1990s and Moldova moved towards independence. In a brief war that surged in 1992, with help from former Soviet, now Russian forces, the Transnistrian separatists prevailed, leading to a frozen conflict and the deployment of Russian “peacekeepers” who are still there today. The breakaway region has a complex ethnic makeup, with a plurality of Russians, as well as Ukrainians and Moldovans, and smaller numbers of other ethnic groups.

The territory of today’s Republic of Moldova had been part of the medieval Principality of Moldavia, with its capital in Iaşi, which by the 16^th century had become a vassal of the Ottoman Empire. However, in 1812, the eastern half of Moldavia, today’s Republic of Moldova plus territories to the north and south in present-day Ukraine, was annexed by the Russian Empire. The western half of historic Moldavia went on to unite with Wallachia to form the Romanian state in the mid-19^th century. When the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires collapsed at the end of the First World War, Romania expanded into ethnically and linguistically Romanian lands. Eastern Moldova, also known as Bessarabia, was incorporated into Romania. But the east bank of the Dniester became part of Soviet Ukraine.

In 1924, the Soviets created the Moldavian Autonomous Socialist Republic along the east bank of the Dniester, within Soviet Ukraine. The capital was initially in Balta, which is today a district of Odessa Region, but in 1929 it was moved to Tiraspol. The idea for the Soviets was that this autonomous region would be a magnet for the rest of Moldova, which they hoped to recover. When, during the Second World War, Moldova was annexed by the Soviet Union, the east bank of the Dniester, including Tiraspol, became part of the Moldavian Soviet Republic.

As the fighting in Transnistria reached its culmination in the summer of 1992, separatist forces, aided by the Russian army, seized the town of Bender, also known as Tighina, on the west bank of the Dniester. There are also pockets of territory on the east bank that remain under Moldovan control. Since 1992, the conflict has remained essentially frozen, although in 1997 an agreement was signed by the two sides, normalising relations between the two territories.

I have visited several unrecognised separatist territories, including Abkhazia in Georgia, Nagorno-Karabakh, when it was still under Armenian control, the Luhansk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine, and Northern Cyprus. None of them have established a normal modus vivendi to the extent that Moldova has done with Transnistria. People travel back and forth freely. Marshrutkas (minibuses) leave Chişinău for Tiraspol every 20 minutes. Vehicles with Transnistria license plates (which bear the Transnistria flag) can be seen in Moldovan-controlled territory, just as Moldovan-registered vehicles can be seen in Transnistria. Entering Transnistria when I visited, the formalities at the crossing point were quick and easy. On the government-controlled side, no checks at all. On the Transnistria side, a quick check of my passport, my details entered in their system, and I was asked the purpose of my visit. I was then given a slip of paper, which I had to produce, along with my passport, on my return.

Transnistria is famed for existing in a Soviet time warp, with its Soviet era monuments, statues of Lenin and other Soviet heroes. Tourists visit Tiraspol for a glimpse of the old Soviet Union. The Transnistria flag even retains the Soviet hammer and sickle emblem. I had supper at a restaurant called Snova v SSSR (Back to the USSR), a kind of Disney land of Soviet nostalgia. But if a desire to hang on to the certainties of the Soviet world, above all its Russian primacy, was behind Transnistria’s separatism, beyond the outward symbols, I don’t think Transnistria today is very Soviet. Much of the economy has been privatised since the 1990s. Tiraspol has excellent cafes serving cappuccinos and delicious pastries, as well as numerous restaurants serving pizzas, burgers and all the fare of the modern world. Its shops are well stocked with all manner of produce.

Wall of Memory, Tiraspol

As well as the Soviet-era monuments, there are also memorials associated with the war at the beginning of the 1990s, commemorating the soldiers who fell for Transnistria. The Memorial of Glory in Tiraspol honours the dead of the Second World War, the Afghan War, and the Transnistrian War. At its centre is the tomb of the unknown soldier and eternal flame. There is also a World II tank. More recently, the memorial was reconstructed, with a Wall of Memory listing those who died for Transnistria.

In Bender, close to the western end of the bridge across the Dniester, linking the town with Tiraspol, there is a collection of monuments. The Stele “City of Military Glory” was unveiled in 2015 to mark the 70^th anniversary of the end of World War II. The president of Transnistria had designated Bender a “City of Military Glory” in 2012. Nearby is the Memorial of Commemoration and Sorrow, dedicated to those who died in the Transnistria war. The monument is described as an open chapel and is topped by a cross. Next to it is a restored infantry fighting vehicle whose crew had died in the fighting in 1992, and also an eternal flame. There is also a monument to Alexander Lebed, the Russian general whose intervention on the side of the Transnistrian separatists was critical in inflicting defeat on the Moldovan forces. Lebed was quite the hero for Transnistria. There is also a rather less well cared for monument to him in a scrappy untended park near the railway station in Tiraspol. Lebed’s involvement in the Transnistria war made him highly popular in Russia, and some considered him a potential successor to President Boris Yeltsin. He was a pragmatic general, who, despite his support for Transnistria, apparently regarded its leaders with contempt as a gang of corrupt “hooligans.” He went on to play a key role in negotiating an end to the first Chechen war.

Memorial of Commemoration and Sorrow, Bender

Yet another nearby monument in Bender is the Monument of Russian Glory, an obelisk topped by an eagle, which was inaugurated in 1912 to mark the centenary of Imperial Russia’s victory over the Ottoman Empire, and the annexation of Bessarabia to the Russian Empire. It had originally stood inside Bender castle, on a hill overlooking the Dniester, which has recently been much restored. All these monuments to military victories, those of the more distant past as well as the more recent victory over Moldova, seem to suggest a state fixated on war. This mirrors the obsession with war promoted by the Putin regime in Russia. In Tiraspol there were posters commemorating the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, although it was the end of July, and the anniversary had been nearly three months earlier. Looking at the memorials to those who died to separate Transnistria from Moldova highlights the difficulties that would have to be overcome if Transnistria is to be reintegrated with Moldova.

Transnistria has faced a severe economic crisis in 2025, since Russia’s gas supplies were cut off due to Ukraine’s ending of a transit agreement at the end of 2024. Transnistria had depended on Russia’s supply of essentially free gas, which powered its industries as well as providing heating and electricity for its inhabitants. That dependency also ensured that Transnistria remained tethered by a tight leash to Moscow. The result of the cut-off was factories halting operations and power cuts for Transnistria’s residents. The crisis is potentially existential for Transnistria, where the economy and the government’s finances had depended on the subsidised Russian gas. An offer of EU help was rejected, presumably under Russian pressure. A partial solution was found by which gas is supplied by a Hungarian company through Moldova, funded by a Russian loan. But the crisis has highlighted just how vulnerable Transnistria is given its dependence on a faraway patron. Moldova itself, with EU help, had already been diversifying its energy supply away from Russia since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and is hooked up to Romania’s electricity grid.

Transnistria finds itself ever more dependent on Moldova. Transnistrian enterprises have to be registered in Moldova in order to trade with Europe. Since 2022, the breakaway territory’s border with Ukraine has been closed. People and goods can get into or out of Transnistria only through Moldova. As it is recognised as part of Moldova, Transnistria has benefited from the Association Agreement Moldova signed with the EU in 2014, boosting trade with the EU, as well as ensuring that Transnistria’s exports have to comply with EU and Moldovan standards. This economic dependence gives Moldova leverage. Moldova’s approach towards Transnistria, with its openness to free movement of people and goods is probably wise, and stands in marked contrast to Ukraine’s approach to the separatist territories in Donbas from 2014 until the full-scale invasion in 2022. The prospect of an eventual peaceful reintegration of Transnistria into Moldova would surely be worth such patience.

In the centre of Tiraspol, tall flag poles fly the flags of Transnistria alongside those of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two separatist territories in Georgia that are sustained by Russian support. There are also representative offices of the two breakaway states, both in the same building. When I walked past, a man was busy putting up a poster commemorating the war in 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia in support of its South Ossetian clients. Evidently there is a strong common sense of shared destiny among these separatist lands. But Transnistria’s position, cut off and lacking a common border with Russia, is more fragile those of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Out of Transnistria’s population of 475,000, according to the 2015 census, some 300,000 are reckoned to have Moldovan citizenship. Many Transnistrians have multiple passports, with around 150,000 having Russian citizenship, and 100,000 having Ukrainian citizenship, as well as smaller numbers with Belarusian, Bulgarian or Israeli citizenship, and many with Romanian citizenship. Walking in the centre of Tiraspol, I saw an advertisement for legal services for people seeking Moldovan, Russian, Ukrainian or Romanian passports. The demand for alternative passports would seem to indicate a high degree of pragmatism among Transnistria’s residents.

While there is little sign at this point of a willingness on the part of Transnistria to reintegrate with Moldova, nevertheless a pragmatic willingness to rub along appears to underlie relations between Tiraspol and Chişinău. This is partly due to force of circumstances. Without Moldovan goodwill, Transnistria would be totally isolated. This pragmatism could be seen in the Moldovan referendum in October 2024, on placing the aspiration to join the EU in the country’s constitution. The referendum passed by a wafer-thin margin, indicating the extent to which Moldovans are divided over the questions of their relationships with Europe and with Russia. It passed at all only thanks to the votes of Moldovans living abroad, who voted overwhelmingly in favour of integration with the EU (more than 200 polling stations were opened abroad, only two of which were in Russia, much to Moscow’s annoyance). Moldovan citizens resident in Transnistria had the opportunity to vote in special polling stations in government-controlled territory, many of them inside the security zone. Official data show that over 15,000 of them did so, of whom 31 per cent voted yes to EU integration. Visiting some of the polling stations, I saw that, while the majority spoke with polling election officials in Russian, many spoke Romanian. Evidently, at least part of Transnistria’s population identifies with Moldova and with its European future.

Russian influence and interference in Moldova is intense. While the conflict over Transnistria remains frozen, Russia has continued to pursue a hybrid campaign in Moldova, seeking to influence its elections, supporting pro-Russian candidates in the hope of bringing to power a government more conducive to Russian interests. This was very much evident in the referendum and presidential election, the first round of which was held on the same day. The process was marred by massive vote-buying, involving money transfers from Russia, a key role being played by the pro-Russian Israeli-born Moldovan politician Ilan Shor, who currently resides in Russia, a fugitive from justice in Moldova following his conviction over a massive banking fraud.

Pro-Russian sentiment remains widespread in Moldova. A couple of weeks after the referendum, I was in the southern region of Gagauzia, an autonomous territory in southern Moldova. The Gagauz are a Turkic-speaking Orthodox Christian people, found in southern Bessarabia, in neighbouring Ukraine, as well as in Moldova. Most Gagauz had opposed Moldovan independence. Worried by the example set by violent separatism in Transnistria, in the 1990s Chişinău granted the Gagauz territorial autonomy within Moldova. Soviet nostalgia and pro-Russian sentiment remain potent within the region. In Gagauzia’s regional capital, I visited the local winery. It houses a museum of Soviet nostalgia, including artefacts from Soviet times, Soviet military and Komsomol (Communist youth league) hats that you can try on, a Lenin bust, and all the old flags of the Soviet republics, including the hammer and sickle. In referendums in Gagauzia in 2014, more than 98 per cent voted in favour of joining the Customs Union of Russia, Belaris and Kazakhstan. Over 97 per cent opposed integration with the EU, and nearly 99 per cent supported independence in case Moldova were to unite with Romania. In the October 2024 referendum, nearly 95 per cent in Gagauzia voted against EU integration.

Although the Gagauz have their own language, the lingua franca in Gagauzia is Russian, and during my stay in the regional capital, Comrat, and in my travels around the region, I mostly heard Russian spoken. Many Gagauz speak Romanian poorly, and there is a lot of sensitivity about the Romanian language being imposed. Within Gagauzia, people have the right to use Gagauz or Russian, as well as Romanian, in public life. I was told that many people do speak Gagauz in rural areas, but oddly, it seems that the language issue in Gagauzia is mainly about defending the use of Russian, rather than of Gagauz.

While the referendum in favour of EU integration marginally passed, thanks to the votes of the Moldovan diaspora, the majority of regions in the country voted against. As well as Gagauzia in the south, neighbouring Taraclia disrict, with its ethnic-Bulgarian majority, voted “no” by 92 per cent, and much of the north also voted strongly against. The presidential election held at the same pitted the pro-western incumbent, Maia Sandu, against Aleksandr Stoianoglo, an ethnic-Gagauz who was seen as the pro-Russian candidate. While Stoianoglo said he supported Moldova’s European path, he opposed the referendum question on enshrining EU integration in the constitution, and promised a foreign policy that balanced East and West. Sandu emerged victorious with 55 per cent of the vote. Mirroring the referendum result, support for Stoianoglo was stronger in the south and north.

While Sandu supporters put the closeness of the referendum and election results down to Russian interference and vote-buying, nevertheless the results would suggest Moldovan society remains divided over its relations with Russia and Europe. Rather than scorning those citizens who are unconvinced by the EU integration path, Ukraine’s example might serve as a salutary warning to proceed with caution, avoiding polarisation and seeking a broader consensus about the country’s European future. Moldova’s path towards Europe is surely clear. But with an aggressive Russian regime still using all means to put obstacles in its way, and a population much of which remains to be convinced, caution would surely be prudent.

War weariness in Ukraine

In the weeks before my arrival back in Ukraine in mid-July 2025, the country had been subjected to some of the most intense Russian missile and drone strikes since the onset of the full-scale invasion in 2022. Hundreds of drones in single nights, as well as ballistic missiles. Terrible pictures of red skies over Kyiv and other cities as fires blazed through the night, of shattered blocks of flats the following morning, and grim stories of families destroyed, of children killed. Travelling down from Chisinau to Odessa, I was expecting to find a country shaken by these terror attacks. I was expecting disturbed nights and sleep deprivation. Surely now people would be taking notice of the air raid alerts and seeking shelter in the basements? Yet when I arrived on a warm summer evening, my first impression was of normalcy. People sitting on café terraces, strolling in the neatly maintained city parks, children gambolling in the fountains, all apparently without a care. After a calm, restful night, I drank my morning coffee at one of the outdoor cafes at the city-centre Book Market. Men and women, young and old, relaxed, chatting, laughing. It hardly felt like a country at war at all.

But of course, everything was not normal. During my stay in Odessa, and again in Kyiv a few days later, there were night-time drone strikes. I slept right through them, my phone switched off so that I did not hear the air raid alert app, sheltered from the bangs by the double glazing and the ear muffles I wore. Buildings were hit, people were killed and injured. In Kyiv, a metro station not too far from my accommodation was hit. The station platforms, where people were sheltering from the drones, were engulfed in smoke. Yet on the following morning, people went about their business, drank their morning coffees, carried on as if nothing had happened. The afternoon after the strike on the metro station, workmen were busy about their repairs, replacing broken glass with plywood, and the station, despite some debris scattered about the entrance hall, was working normally.

Kyiv: the aftermath of a missile and drone attack

There is an outlandish dissonance between the reality of a desperate war for national survival, with thousands of soldiers risking their lives in the trenches among the shattered towns and villages along the frontline, the frequent missile and drone attacks on cities throughout the country, and the normal everyday life that continues amidst it all. While young men enjoy the good life in towns and cities like Odessa and Kyiv, going out to bars and cafes, frolicking with their girlfriends, other men, many of them by no means young, endure the destruction, the daily confrontation with death at the frontline, the terror of shellfire and drones, the loss of friends and comrades. And then there are the wounded, the men missing legs or arms that one passes in the streets of Kyiv and other cities. So many sacrifices. What must they think of these young men living it up at home as if everything were normal?

Ukraine’s armed forces face a severe shortfall of men. With certain exemptions, men aged between 25 and 60 are subject to the draft. Social media are full of stories of men being nabbed in the street and sent off to the army. Many live in fear of being caught. Some avoid going out more than is necessary. And despite Ukraine’s existential struggle, the wider society largely sympathises with the draft dodgers. There is deep resistance to the draft. Despite the advice of Western governments that the age for the draft should be dropped, there is strong opposition to requiring younger men, men in the prime of life, at the peak of their physical strength and fitness, to serve in the military. This year, there is a campaign to attract young men to join the army voluntarily, with higher wages than other soldiers receive. It is claimed to have had some success. But still, Ukraine’s need for more recruits is not being met.

What has happened? What became of the spirit of 2022, when, following Russia’s full-scale invasion, men and some women queued up to receive weapons and training, when men returned from abroad to defend their country? Is it exhaustion with the war? Is it that, after the disappointments of the failed Ukrainian offensive in 2023, and the slow, steady meat-grinder advance of the Russian invader, people have lost hope in eventual victory? Several people I spoke to gave their reasons. Relatives or friends who had served in the army had told them about chaos and mismanagement, of incompetent officers and of lives needlessly lost. Stories emerged from the front of new units decimated the first time they came into contact with the enemy, of new recruits fleeing in the face of Russian offensives, of desertions. No doubt, mistakes have been made. Chaos and confusion have always been a part of the horrible experience of war. Random, futile death has always been as much a part of warfare as heroic sacrifice.

The Ukrainian government’s reluctance to extend the draft to include younger men reflects the widely held position of Ukrainian society, the reluctance to make the sacrifices necessary to defeat Russia and expel the aggressor from Ukrainian land. Ukrainians are justifiably resentful about the slowness of Western allies to provide the weapons needed. Time and again, the West resisted sending crucial weapons systems, anti-aircraft missiles, artillery, tanks, aircraft, long-range missiles, and then relented too late, when opportunities had been missed, when the Russians had prepared fortifications, or moved logistics centres out of range. Western governments’ tardiness in sending weapons have cost Ukraine dearly.

But if Ukraine is to liberate Russian-occupied territory, whatever weapons systems it has, it would involve men going on the offensive against heavily fortified Russian positions, with the losses that would inevitably entail. Ukrainian military commanders have sometimes talked up the potential of new technologies that would enable them to take back territory while preserving the lives of their soldiers. Well, up to a point. But the Russians are also matching Ukrainian technological advances, and their leaders have no such qualms about sending young men to their deaths. Ukrainian society needs to decide whether it is ready to pay the price for liberating its land. And if not, perhaps it would be better to seek terms with Russia sooner rather than later.

One of my friends in Kyiv, originally from occupied Luhansk, told me he no longer thought Ukraine could take back the territory it had lost. Recent opinion surveys suggest his viewpoint is typical, that much higher numbers of Ukrainians are now willing to entertain the idea of giving up occupied land for peace. In 2022, he had been bullish, determined. Millions of Ukrainians were ready to fight for their country, he had said then. Now he was convinced most Ukrainians would accept the loss of territory, if it could bring an end to the war. This seems to be a widespread view now. That the sacrifices are too great. That, in the face of Russia’s greater size and capacity to wage war, and with the inadequate support of the country’s allies, it would be better to make peace sooner rather than later. And then there is the morale-shattering withdrawal of American support by the Trump administration, the shock of depending on a US president who cares not a jot for Ukraine or for the transatlantic alliance, and who places a far higher value on his relationship with the dictator Putin.

The idea that Ukraine should have to give up territory, that Russia’s aggression should be rewarded, is deeply offensive. Not just that. It undermines the basis of the post-1945 world order. If Russia is allowed to get away with its violent seizure of Ukrainian territory, every other would-be aggressor would be emboldened. And who would bet on Putin stopping there, once he had digested a chunk of Ukrainian land? But despite all the fine words, European countries have been slow to step up to the challenge posed by the noxious alliance of Putin’s aggression and Trump’s indifference. If we are not ready to give Ukraine the help it needs to defeat Russia, who are we to tell Ukrainians to carry on sacrificing their people indefinitely for what might, after all, turn out to be a forlorn cause? It is a terrible prospect. If things go in that direction, that Europe stands by and watches as Trump joins Putin in imposing an unjust settlement on Ukraine, it would rank alongside the betrayals of Munich and Yalta. But without adequate support from the West, Ukraine’s position would probably be impossible. The shame would be on the West, on Europe and America, not on Ukraine.

A visit to Kharkiv

On the long train journey from Warsaw to Kyiv, one of my travelling companions was a teenage girl from Kharkiv who had with her mother taken refuge from the war in a small town in Cornwall. Her home in Kharkiv was in the centre of the city, and she had heard the blast when a missile struck the central Freedom Square on 1 March 2022. In the early days of the invasion, Russian forces had briefly entered the northern suburbs of Kharkiv, and the city had been subjected to heavy shelling and missile strikes. Numerous buildings had been damaged, and civilians killed and wounded. Unsurprisingly, many had left. But as most men under the age of 60 were not allowed to leave the country, my fellow passenger’s father had stayed behind. This was the first time she had been back to visit him.

By May 2022, the Russian invaders had been pushed back from Kharkiv, relieving much of the pressure, although, like towns and cities throughout Ukraine, it continued to face missile and drone attacks. Ukraine’s counter-attack in September 2022 had liberated most of occupied Kharkiv region. People had started to return to the city.

My travelling companion appeared to have settled in well in Cornwall. She liked the elderly couple she and her mother were staying with. Her English had improved immensely, she told me. She had got a job in a hotel, and was earning enough money to be able to send some to her father. But she was homesick. Life in a small town did not suit her. She would rather have gone to a big city. She saw her future in Ukraine.

Like many people in eastern Ukraine with relations in Russia, the war had wrought terrible damage on her family bonds. While she was born in Kharkiv, both her parents were Russian, she said. Her father was from Crimea and her mother from Russia itself. She had fallen out completely with her grandparents on both sides. At the start of the invasion, they had told her that it would all be over quickly, and that Ukraine would be liberated by the Russian army. When she had said that she did not want to be liberated, one of her grandfathers had said in that case it would be better if they were all killed. It pained her to have to say that she now felt closer to the couple she was staying with in Cornwall, who cared about her more than her own grandparents did. Such stories are all too common. Several people from Donbas have told me how communication with parents or other relatives in occupied territory or in Russia, had become almost impossible.

The next morning we woke up to the news that the Kakhovka dam had been blown during the night, causing immense environmental damage and loss of life in the lower reaches of the Dnipro river. A friend in Odessa told me that all kinds of detritus, including animal carcasses and landmines, had washed up on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast. One more horror inflicted upon the Ukrainian people.

Trukhaniv island, Kyiv

In Kyiv, despite the constant trauma and weariness with the war, people continued to go about their lives as normally as possible. They sat on café terraces in the sunshine, or strolled in the city’s parks, or on the islands in the Dnipro. I too enjoyed beautiful peaceful afternoons by the water, trees and lily pads, eating shashlik and sipping cold beer. Kyiv in summer is always beautiful.

The previous month, in May, missile and drone attacks had been particularly frequent. People lost sleep. Nerves were frayed. But during my stay, the air raid warnings were less frequent. Around the city were signs pointing to air raid shelters. As on my previous visit in the autumn, people had to decide whether to go to the shelters. Many decided to ignore the warnings. A friend told me that they looked at the news feeds on their mobile phones to assess the degree of risk, and whether or not they should take to a shelter. One afternoon, I headed for the nearest metro station in response to an alert. The person I was with, scrolling through the news, told me this was a major attack. During air raids alerts, entry to the metro stations was free of charge. People stood around, some talking to each other, others glued to their phones. Apparently on the surface people had heard the explosions. Perhaps surprisingly, this Russian attack on Kyiv coincided with a visit to the Ukrainian capital by a delegation of African leaders. Might this affect the pro-Russian leanings of some of them?

Since the spate of missile attacks the previous autumn, attacking Ukraine’s power infrastructure, the country had received more modern, more effective western air defence systems, including the American Patriot system. But it had not received enough of them, forcing the Ukrainian authorities into an appalling dilemma, as to whether to protect cities or frontline soldiers embarking on their summer counter-offensive, and which cities to protect? Almost all the missiles and drones aimed at Kyiv were now shot down, although the pieces of destroyed missiles still had to fall to earth. But other cities were less well protected.

Boarded up Regional Administration building, Kharkiv

Towards the end of June, I travelled to Kharkiv. Taking the overnight train, I arrived early in the morning. Few people were about yet as I walked around the city centre. The debris of missile strikes had been cleared up, but the scars were still there. Many buildings, including the battered regional administration, had boarded up windows that had been shattered by the blasts. As in other cities, many monuments had been covered for their protection, including the statue of the great Ukrainian poet, Taras Shevchenko, and the World War I British tank that had been abandoned during the Russian civil war (actually a misnomer, as the multi-sided war was fought throughout the former Russian Empire, and much of the fighting took place in Ukraine).

Yet the city was very much alive. The gardens in Shevchenko park were beautifully tended. Families enjoyed the warm weather. Café and restaurant terraces were full of customers. I was delighted to find that my favourite café from previous visits was working normally. The cakes and pastries were still excellent. The only difference was that the waiters and waitresses now addressed customers in Ukrainian, as they are required to do.

Shevchenko Park, Kharkiv

My first visit to Kharkiv had been in the summer of 2014. The atmosphere then had been very different. In February to April that year, following the Maidan Revolution in Kyiv, Kharkiv had teetered on the brink, nearly going the same way as Donetsk and Luhansk. The regional administration building had briefly been occupied by pro-Russian activists. Pro-Russian thugs from a sports club attacked pro-Ukrainian demonstrators. The city mayor wavered and initially appeared to take the pro-Russian side. The local police and security services seemed paralysed. But decisive action by an elite police unit from the town of Vinnytsia bloodlessly ended the occupation of the administration building. The commander of the unit said that had swift action not been taken, support and weapons would have poured over the nearby Russian border, and that Kharkiv, like Donetsk and Luhansk, might have been lost. The atmosphere was tense when I visited that summer of 2014. Groups of police hung around outside the regional administration building. I was struck by how few Ukrainian flags were in evidence. Very different from Kyiv, or Dnipropetrovsk (now renamed Dnipro), which I visited after Kharkiv, where the Ukrainian flag was everywhere, the national anthem blaring out constantly in the central square.

Kharkiv lives and works

This time, in 2023, it was quite different. Whatever pro-Russian sentiment there might once have been in Kharkiv had been blown away by Russia’s aggression. Ukrainian flags were all over the place. Posters expressed thanks to the Ukrainian army, defenders of Kharkiv and of Ukraine. Others showed construction workers or gardeners about their work, with a defiant quote from the mayor: “Kharkiv lives and works.” Indeed, it was remarkable that despite such severe blows, such destruction, the people of Kharkiv continued to work, and to live. But the cruelty of the war continues. Missiles sometimes get through. A sad little monument in the city centre, surrounded by teddy bears and other soft children’s toys, commemorates the children who will never grow up.

This is the cost of the West’s prevarication over sending Ukraine the weapons it needs to defend itself. It is measured in the deaths of innocents, of people who have suffered terrible injuries, children who dreamed of being gymnasts or footballers, but who now have to learn to walk with prosthetics. The air defence systems that protect Kyiv are highly effective, but the inhabitants of other cities are left open to Russian terror because of the niggardliness of Western leaders with their pathetic excuses about not wanting to escalate the conflict or to provoke Russia. Ukrainian soldiers have to fight with an arm tied behind their back because Western leaders hesitate to send the modern planes they need, or the long-range missiles that could hit the sources of Russia’s terror strikes. So many of us have been impressed by Ukrainians’ spirit and resilience in face of such terrorism. As they defend themselves against a brutal aggressor, they deserve all the support we can give them.

Kyiv under attack

The day before I travelled by bus from Warsaw to Lviv in mid-November 2022, Russia launched a mass-missile attack on Ukraine. A friend in Lviv contacted me and asked whether I was sure I really wanted to come? She had taken refuge in a shelter when the air raid siren had sounded, but she had heard the explosions when the missiles struck. Since the previous month, Ukraine had faced regular such missile attacks targeting its energy infrastructure every week or so in an obscene attempt by Russia to make Ukrainians freeze that winter. I had realised that such attacks were likely to occur during my stay. But I didn’t know quite what to expect. During my stay in Odessa that summer, people had largely ignored the air raid sirens. Would it be different now? Ukraine had not yet been provided with the kind of modern air defence systems that could more or less reliably shoot down Russian missiles. And even though they did shoot down many of them, the debris still had to fall to earth. Central Kyiv had been struck a short while before, and there had been victims, ordinary people going about their business, walking or driving in the city.

I arrived in Lviv on an autumnal evening just after the electricity had been restored. Meeting my friend for dinner, it was striking how normal things seemed, at least on the surface. The pizzeria we went to was packed with people out enjoying themselves. But of course, the situation was far from normal. The first snow of winter fell while I was in Lviv. Whether Ukraine could cope with the repeated missile attacks, whether the energy supply could be maintained, whether the heating could be kept on and the water kept flowing, these were all questions with uncertain answers that autumn. There was even talk of Kyiv potentially having to be evacuated if the city became uninhabitable.

Arriving in Kyiv after an overnight train journey, I took the metro and went straight to one of my favourite cafés, close to the Golden Gate. I drank coffee and ate an excellent almond croissant. It seemed extraordinary to be back. Having freshened up in my hotel, the same hotel where I had stayed many times before, I met a friend for lunch in an excellent nearby Georgian restaurant. Unlike Odessa during my visit in the summer, with its half-empty streets and closed shops and cafes, Kyiv seemed much more alive. Most of the cafes and restaurants I had previously frequented were still working normally. A city-centre shopping mall was bustling with people. The spirit of the city seemed undimmed.

Glass Bridge and Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People

But of course, all was not normal. Many streets around key government and administrative buildings were closed off. Statues were covered up for their protection: Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the leader of a 17^th century Cossack revolt against Polish rule; Princess Olha, who as regent in the 10^th century was the first ruler of Kyivan Rus to be baptised as a Christian; the author Mikhail Bulgakov, who was born in Kyiv. The glass bridge connecting two hills in the city centre was closed, having been damaged by a missile strike the previous month. The Soviet-era monument to Ukrainian-Russian friendship at one end of the bridge had been dismantled. The monumental arch that rose above it, which had been constructed un 1982 to commemorate Ukraine’s union with Russia, had been renamed the Peoples’ Friendship Arch after Ukraine’s independence, but after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine it had been renamed again, the Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People.

Graffiti on the Maidan Nezalezhnosti

Concrete blocks and iron-girder tank traps had been pushed to the sides of the road by Independence Square, the Maidan Nezalezhnosti. An artwork attributed to Banksy, painted on one of the concrete blocks, appeared to show a girl and a boy using one of the tank traps as a seesaw.

On the square in front of St Michael’s monastery, by Princess Olha’s covered statue, a selection of wrecked tanks, armoured personnel carriers and other military vehicles had been lined up as trophies of Russia’s defeats before Kyiv in the spring. People walked around them, clambered over them, and posed in front of them. President Zelensky had brought various visiting foreign dignitaries here. On some of the vehicles people had written graffiti, “for Bakhmut”, “for Severodonetsk”, “for Mykolaiv”, towns that had been subjected to Russian destruction. And alongside the wall surrounding the monastery, the lines of photos of fallen soldiers grew ever longer. Mostly young men, and some women, some of them posing formally in their uniforms, others smiling happily for the camera, lives cut short by Russia’s brutal aggression. On Independence Square, an impromptu memorial consisted of hundreds of little Ukrainian flags commemorating, according to placards, foreigners and Ukrainians killed by Putin.

The scrap of Russia's failed assault on Kyiv

The day before I left Kyiv, there was another mass-missile attack. I later heard that this was one of the most devastating strikes. Electricity and water were knocked out in much of the city. Somehow, although the streets around were without power, in my hotel the lights remained on, although we were without water. Many restaurants and cafes had generators and were still able to operate, although some of them, which had not prepared, were unable to provide tea or coffee, or anything that required water. Eating my lunch in a large basement self-service canteen, there were many people who had not come to eat, but were rather taking shelter, and using the opportunity to charge their phones and use the wifi. The shopping mall which had seemed so busy when I arrived a few days earlier was now quiet, with few shoppers.

That evening, before catching the overnight train back to Lviv, I ate in a burger restaurant. Generators were still whirring up and down the pitch-dark street. The restaurant was full of people, and, as at the self-service canteen earlier, many of them were not eating or drinking. Here was a place where they could sit in warmth, with electricity to charge their phones. As I had seen in other cafes and restaurants, no one objected to people sitting without ordering anything. This was the solidarity among the people of Kyiv. Facing the horror of Russia’s aggression, people pulled together and looked after each other. The government was establishing “invincibility centres” where people could go for warmth, a hot drink and a wifi connection. But the atmosphere that evening felt more subdued. Despite the resilience and determination that was so impressive, after several weeks of such attacks, people were weary. There was snow on the ground, the weather was getting cold. How would the city fare under these repeated Russian attacks?

As I pulled my suitcase up to the railway station, I felt sad to be leaving. The assistance the world had provided Ukraine was significant, but it was not enough. Ukrainians were being left to face the Russian missiles and drones without adequate protection, without the means to strike back at the places from which they were being fired with impunity, far away. The West had modern military aircraft and missile-defence systems far superior to those employed by Russia, but they were not being supplied to Ukraine. The suffering of the Ukrainian people would be on our consciences, as we could have done more to help. I was leaving, going back to a home where I had electricity and no one was trying to make me freeze. As Ukrainians anxiously faced winter under Russian attack, our slowness to provide the help they needed shamed us all.

Life in Separatist Luhansk

I first visited Luhansk at the end of September 2014. Luhansk was the capital of one of the two separatist-held territories in the eastern Ukrainian Donbas region, the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR). Although there was still artillery fire across the contact line every day, the intensive fighting of the summer had ended, and Luhansk itself was no longer a target. We had crossed the contact line at Fashchivka, west of Luhansk, where, on the Ukrainian side, we met the pugnacious ‘Baloo’, the commander at the Ukrainian frontline position on the road from Debaltseve. On the other side, the opposing Cossack soldiers were amiable. They gave us apples. They called themselves Cossacks, and wore the distinctive round Cossack hats, but they were local men, several of them coal miners. Now they seemed cheerful enough. But despite their uniforms and weapons, these were not experienced soldiers. We continued into LNR-held territory. At the small town of Krasnyi Kut, we were stopped by a group of people in Cossack apparel who were initially reluctant to let us pass. One female soldier in particular was hostile and obstructive. However, once we got out of the car and started chatting with them, their reserve melted and their natural friendliness broke through. After a few minutes, we were on our way again.

Approaching Luhansk from the southwest, we stopped in the town of Lutuhyne. We had not had any lunch, and were hoping to find a shop where we could buy some food. We were also interested to see how well stocked the local shops were after the past months of warfare. Lutuhyne had been under Ukrainian-army control for several weeks in the summer, and there had been heavy fighting in the eastern outskirts of the town, as attested by the ruined buildings we saw, and the burned-out tanks strewn about. When we parked outside a shop, people quickly emerged from buildings, wanting to tell us about what they had experienced, about the conditions they lived in. We were probably the first foreigners to have visited the town since before the conflict. The local administration was functioning, they told us, but they were particularly perturbed by the suspension of banking services. They could not access their accounts, and pensioners could not receive their pensions. This was to be a persistent complaint in LNR-controlled territory in the coming months.

Luhansk city centre

Later in the afternoon, we reached Luhansk. The first impression was of quiet. There were few vehicles on the roads, few pedestrians. The city had been emptied of much of its population. We did not intend to stay long. The days were getting shorter, and we wanted to be back across the contact line before darkness. We sped back towards Severodonetsk by the most direct route, along the main highway to Lysychansk. A couple of weeks later, this road would become impassable, as LNR forces surrounded and pushed out the Ukrainian-held checkpoints along much of its length. Brutally contested during the following weeks, it would be churned up by shellfire, strewn with debris, and in places blocked with landmines. But now it was a good, straight road. We expected to be back in time for supper. However, a Russian soldier at one of the LNR checkpoints had other ideas. Our local interpreter could tell he was Russian by his accent. But his bearing, his crisp, brusque manner told us that this was a very different type of figure to the amiable Cossacks we had met earlier in the day. This was a professional soldier. He was not impolite, but he was firm. We would not be proceeding down that road today. We could only speculate as to the reason. Normally this road was open. Perhaps they were moving military equipment and did not want us to see it.

Now we had a choice to make. Twilight was approaching. Did we want to attempt to cross the contact line further east, across the bridge at Stanytsia Luhanska, in failing light, when miscalculations could easily be made by either side, our identity mistaken? The safest option was to return to Luhansk and spend the night there. Arriving back in Luhansk, the city was closing down. The few shops that were open were shutting for the night. With nightfall, the city was completely dark. No street lights shone, no lights emanated from the buildings lining the ghostly streets. There was hardly a soul about.

We looked for a hotel. At one, we were told they could provide us with a meal, but that there was neither electricity nor water. Another said they could not provide food, but that they did have water, albeit cold water. They had a generator which they could turn on for a while, giving us some light. We decided that having water was the winning argument, and stayed there. In normal times, this was supposed to be the best hotel in Luhansk. We had heard that so-called “little green men”, Russian soldiers without their insignia who had first appeared during the crisis in Crimea earlier in the year, were staying at this hotel, as well as a handful of foreign journalists.

I was very much interested as to what we were going to do about food. In principle, I knew that, when travelling in a place under such conditions, it was wise to be prepared for any eventuality, and to have a small stock of food in my grab bag. I had not heeded this advice, except for a small snack bar. Thankfully I did have plenty of bottled water. But a Bulgarian ex-soldier among our number told us not to worry. We would have food. I was wondering where this food was going to come from? There were no restaurants open in the city, we were told. But as we sat down and began to light candles in the hotel lobby, our Bulgarian friend opened his rucksack. It seemed like the feeding of the 5,000. There were biscuits and sausages, and, the final triumph, a bottle of home-made Bulgarian grape brandy, made from grapes pressed by his wife’s own feet. And there was music as well, from his portable system. As promised, the lighting came on for a little while. But we enjoyed our impromptu little candle-lit party. The hotel rooms were comfortable, notwithstanding the cold water.

After the fire: Luhansk market place

The next morning, we set out to have a look around Luhansk. It was a sunny day in early autumn, and the town looked less bleak than the previous night. In the centre, guards stood outside the regional administration building, now the centre of the LNR government. The building, and many surrounding it, had been damaged, pockmarked by shrapnel. In June, a government air strike had damaged the building and killed several people. Much of the nearby market had been wrecked by fire in one of the attacks, rows of metal stores charred and twisted by the blaze. Yet part of the market was open, and the hardy Luhansk residents who had remained in the city pottered among its sparsely supplied stalls, buying essentials. Though the town’s restaurants and cafes, deprived of their power supply, were still shut, in the market were a couple of stores selling shaslik grilled on open fires. A couple of them also sold beakers of instant coffee. Life was starting to pick up in the war-torn city.

By the time I next visited Luhansk about a month later, at the beginning of November 2014, the situation had considerably improved. The water supply had been reconnected, and there was electricity much of the time. Shops and the city market which had been poorly supplied a month earlier, were now well stocked. Food products, we were told, were being supplied from a variety of sources, including from other parts of Ukraine. The Ukrainian government had not yet imposed its economic blockade on the separatist-held areas. Many restaurants and cafes had reopened. I ate several times at a very good city-centre restaurant, serving traditional Ukrainian fare. It was a favourite haunt for foreign journalists and for LNR officials. I especially liked the Cossack Borsch, a thick soup served with garlic-rolls and salo, a tasty pork-lard paste. In daytime, the streets were busy, with plenty of traffic on the roads. But at night the city was still dark and largely unlit. Few people were to be found out and about. The walk along unlit streets from the hotel to the restaurant was a slightly nervous experience, my pulse rate rising a little each time a figure emerged from the shadows.

Some of the people who had left the city at the height of the conflict were returning. A city education official told us that while most schools had opened late for the start of the new school year, by October most were open. Shell damage was being repaired, and the numbers of pupils attending were picking up. A semblance of normality was returning. Traffic police were working at some of the main intersections.

Shelling could frequently be heard in the distance. The city was only 15 or so kilometres from the frontline. But the town itself had not been targeted for some time. During the conflict in the summer, Ukrainian forces had come close to the city. One local told me Ukrainian troops had even been seen in the outskirts. He could not understand, he sighed regretfully, why they had not simply taken the city. If Luhansk had been retaken for Ukraine, it would have dealt a severe blow to the separatists, he said. Not all Luhansk’s residents were happy to see their city under separatist control.

Election poster: the ruling triumvirate

But now that the period of intensive fighting was over, and that the Ukrainian forces had been pushed back, the LNR authorities were setting about establishing the institutions of their putative state. On 2 November, elections had been held. They were, of course, a sham. There was no genuine political competition. The trappings of an election were there, including campaign posters. But the LNR leaders were simply confirmed in office. Prominent individuals were included on the lists that notionally contested the election. One who had been put on the list of the head of the LNR, Igor Plotnitsky, and whose picture was on campaign posters in the town, told me she had not sought to be included, but had been approached. Nevertheless, she said she was now a ‘separatist’. Some told me that the turnout had been significant, as evidenced by the long queues at polling stations. But the explanation for that was straightforward. As an LNR minister told me, many fewer polling stations had opened than had been the case in Ukrainian elections.

For many officials, the new reality presented an acute dilemma. I spoke with one local official who found himself in an impossible position. Whatever he did, he told me, he would be condemned by one side or the other. He had been appointed under Ukrainian law, but now the reality was that others were in control. He told me he felt afraid for his own safety. He had reason to be afraid. In separatist-held territory, during the summer and autumn of 2014, people had been disappearing, nobody knew where, or who had taken them. Many were held in basements, without any process or accountability, their families not knowing what had become of them. If this official were suspected of being loyal to Ukraine, that could be what awaited him. Yet if he stayed in his place, and continued carrying out his functions, many on the Ukrainian side could regard him as a traitor. There was little appreciation or sympathy for the dilemmas such people faced. After all, many officials had left separatist territory and moved to the government-held side. What else could it mean if someone chose to stay put? This was a man approaching retirement. Throughout his career he had always done what was expected of him. He had towed the party line, whether that was the Communist Party or the Party of Regions of ousted President Yanukovich. Now there were competing demands for his loyalty, and he was in an unimaginably uncomfortable position. He asked us not to visit him again. While he was happy we were there, and he was sure we were nice people, he was afraid that his talking to us might be misconstrued.

Such dilemmas faced many others, torn between what they felt was their duty to continue to ensure the provision of services to the population and the anxiety that in Ukraine they would be condemned. The water supply was a critical problem for the city, and even more so for many other parts of LNR-controlled territory. Pumping stations and pipelines had been damaged, and an already decrepit infrastructure was collapsing altogether in some areas. The LNR’s particular problem was that while most of the water supply came from government-held areas, the majority of the region’s population were in separatist-held territory. Water supplies to separatist-held towns were drastically cut. During 2015, hundreds of thousands had no mains water supply at all for extended periods. The authorities on the Ukrainian-controlled side used their control of the water supply as a weapon.

I met the director of the public water company in Luhansk a couple of times. He saw himself as responsible for the water supply for the whole region, on both sides of the contact line. He tried to maintain contacts with officials on the government-controlled side. There was a degree of cooperation to maintain essential infrastructure, including the water supply and electric power cables. Local cease-fires were agreed to enable repair work. But it was limited. The water supply company director was treading a fine line. The last I heard of him, he had crossed into government-held territory, and had promptly been arrested.

The Ukrainian authorities took an increasingly harsh attitude towards the civilian population in rebel-held territory. Towards the end of 2014, they began to implement an economic blockade. Not only were pensions no longer paid, but traffic across the contact line was drastically restricted. This caused unbearable strains for many people. Families found themselves cut off from each other. Pensioners who had been able to cross the contact line to draw their pensions were now stuck. The blockade also brought shortages of many goods. In the early weeks of 2015, Ukrainian products gradually disappeared from shops in Luhansk. Prices soared, often double or more the prices of the same products on the government-controlled side. Some people went hungry. Medicines were not supposed to be included in the blockade, but too often they could not be found. I brought drugs across the contact line for one elderly woman with an ailing heart. A local official told me, his face racked with pain and sadness, that his mother was dying of cancer, and the medicines she needed were not available.

Rally in Luhansk

At the end of December 2014, I attended a rally in central Luhansk, a protest against the blockade. It was in a city centre square, next to the war memorial and the eternal flame. Flanking the square are two First World War vintage tanks, abandoned by the British force that had intervened on the side of the Whites in the revolutionary war. It was a largish crowd for Luhansk, up to 3,000 people, I estimated. They waved flags of the LNR and of Plotnitsky’s ‘Peace for Luhansk’ party. One could suppose that many of those present were state-sector workers who had been told to attend. Speakers included the leading triumvirate of the LNR, Plotnitsky, the prime minister, Gennadiy Tsipkalov, and the speaker of the LNR parliament, Aleksey Karyakin, as well as the mayor of Luhansk and representatives of veterans’ and women’s organisations. There was much emotive language, accusing the Ukrainian authorities of genocide and of a new ‘holodomor’, a reference to the mass starvation in Ukraine in the 1930s. The non-payment of pensions was raised time and again. While people were not being paid the pensions they had earned, money was instead being spent on arms to attack them. One speaker said that if the Ukrainian government considered Luhansk region to be part of Ukraine, it should pay people their pensions. But if not, it should say so plainly.

Anger at the Ukrainian authorities was widespread, even among people who did not support separation from Ukraine. How could our president do this to us, I heard time and again? There may have been a certain logic to the blockade. The territory was out of the government’s control, and, Moscow’s denials notwithstanding, ultimately controlled by Russia. For Kyiv, this was occupied territory, and it was the occupying power, Russia, that was obliged to provide for the population. But the Ukrainian government’s approach did nothing to encourage people to see for themselves a future in Ukraine. For many people in separatist-held territory, the situation seemed clear. Ukraine had abandoned them, denied them their salaries and pensions, blockaded them, shelled them. For some, the realisation of their situation was tinged with sadness. I asked a villager close to Luhansk whether she could see a future within Ukraine? She replied that unfortunately she thought people in the rest of Ukraine had a negative attitude to the people of Donbas now.

Christmas in Luhansk

Yet amid the hardship, the city authorities tried to restore a semblance of normality. As 2014 came to an end, Christmas lights were hung in the city centre, and a large Christmas tree was raised in a central square, in front of the statue of Lenin. Children played, and little electric toy cars were hired out for them to ride in. And then, perhaps the most important symbol of normal life returning, the city centre’s street lights were switched back on for New Year. A stage was erected in the city centre, and there was a pop concert. Celebrating New Year in our hotel, not far from the city centre, we listened to the fireworks. Not shells that evening, but fireworks.

Early in 2015, the sense of returning normality was for a few weeks broken. Our movements were restricted. We were mostly not allowed to leave the city, and when we were, it was only under strict coordination with the LNR authorities. We had a fairly good idea what was happening. Things were being moved along the roads of the LNR that we were not supposed to see. In the second half of January, the shelling started to pick up along the contact line. Thankfully it was mostly not aimed at Luhansk itself, although one shell did fall less than a kilometre from our hotel. The boom boom boom of shells, and the whoosh of rocket launches punctuated the nights, disturbing my sleep. To the west of us, a battle was going on for the strategic town of Debaltseve, which would fall to the Russian-backed separatists in February.

The fall of Debaltseve was a severe blow to Ukraine. Once again, the inability of its army to withstand a determined offensive by the Russian-backed separatist forces had been demonstrated. In the aftermath, an uneasy normality resumed in Luhansk. Shelling continued up and down the frontline. But life in the city carried on. The shops, denuded of many products due to the Ukrainian blockade for several weeks, were gradually restocked with Russian replacements. More restaurants opened. Public sector salaries began to be paid, as well as pensions. They were low, lower than in government-held territory, but it made things easier. They were paid in Roubles, indicating where the money was coming from. The Rouble was now introduced as an official currency, along with the Ukrainian Hryvnia, the US Dollar and the Euro. In practice, the Rouble quickly supplanted the Hryvnia as the main currency, unsurprisingly given that people were being paid in Roubles.

Strolling through the bustling streets of central Luhansk that spring and summer, life could almost have been normal. Students crowded around the university during breaks from their lessons. The American-style diner was full of youngsters enjoying burgers, pizzas and Tex-Mex. Smart cafes served capuchinos and delicious cakes and pastries. On my last weekend before leaving Luhansk in September 2015, there was a fair in the city centre. Folklore dance groups from around the LNR performed. Stalls sold local products. One had been set up by the town’s Greek community. Youngsters posed in front of e newly-erected sign saying ‘I love Luhansk’. Plotnitsky paid a visit, inspecting the stalls, chatting amiably. It was a sunny day, and the atmosphere was festive.

Yet all was not normal in Luhansk. While city life may have appeared normal on the surface, many faced severe hardship, deprived of earnings, facing high prices in the shops, dependent on humanitarian assistance. Only a few kilometres away, across the contact line, for all Ukraine’s chronic problems and its crumpled economy, conditions were nevertheless incomparably better than in separatist-held territory. Whatever the show of normality and optimism put on by the separatist authorities, Luhansk existed in a kind of limbo. Locals again and again expressed disbelief about the region’s long-term separation from Ukraine. One local journalist told me there had been a lot of excitement in the spring of 2014, that many thought they would soon, like the people of Crimea, enjoy Russian-level salaries and pensions, higher than in Ukraine. But it had not happened. A year later, many had concluded that Russia did not want them, and that all the pain and suffering was for nothing.

A glimpse of Afghanistan

For the month I spent in Afghanistan in the summer of 2014, I lived in a hermetically sealed little world, protected, isolated from the Afghan society around us, beyond the walls and the bullet proof windows of our armoured vehicles. Physically I was in Kabul. But I was cut off from it. Living in a fortified compound, eating international food in a canteen managed by a Macedonian chef, where men could stroll around in shorts, and women could bare their arms and shoulders, it had nothing to do with the Afghanistan beyond the walls.

Making the short journey to work each day, along the Jalalabad Road to the Central Election Commission, I caught glimpses of Kabul. Dusty street life; tumble-down shacks serving as shops; bearded men in turbans watching the world go by; cars and motorcycles in a chaotic melee; occasionally a couple of women in burqas; boys and girls on their way to school; well-armed police and soldiers at the intersections. We sped by, looking intently out of the windows, trying to take it in, snatching at fleeting impressions of the country we were in but which we were hardly able to experience at all. But in truth we might have learned more about Kabul on a couch at home, in front of a television.

The only brief moments spent outside of this bubble were when I arrived and when I left. Arriving at the airport, we passed through passport and customs control together with all the other passengers. Stepping out of the terminal, looking for the car park at which we knew our escort of security men would be waiting, there was a bus. An Afghan passenger advised us to get in. It was quicker, no sense to walk outside in the August midday heat. So we got in. One of our companions decided to walk. Had we done the right thing? I had no idea. Entering the weird world of the westerner in Afghanistan, I was a compete novice.

When I arrived back at the airport a month later, I had to get out of the armoured vehicle and walk a few metres before entering the multi-layered security cordon. Just for a moment I was outside the security protection that had surrounded me like a force field the whole of the past month. I had heard how, not long before, and not far from the airport, a foreigner had got out of his vehicle while the convoy he was travelling in was stuck in a jam. An opportunist cyclist passing by had stabbed him in the neck, killing him. This was the reality of being a westerner in Kabul. There were good reasons why we were so cut off from the city around us. There were people there who would jump at any opportunity to kill us. Nothing personal. But we were foreigners in their land, unwanted occupiers. It was trivial, but just for a moment I had stepped into a Kabul street, without any barriers. Just for a moment I was really in Afghanistan. And then I walked up to the first security checkpoint into the airport.

My home for that month was in the Green Village, a highly fortified little oasis of western life on the outskirts of Kabul. Simple but adequate rooms in pre-fabricated meccano-set blocks, with reliable electricity and hot water, English-language TV and rather slow internet access. The canteen served quite decent food. My first evening, there was lobster on the menu. I even ate porridge (or oatmeal for the Americans among us) for the first time since childhood. A café served acceptable cappuccinos and muffins, and rather good ice cream. And at the centre of it all was a garden, where we would sit and while away the warm evenings.

It was a strange little world. Often in the evenings we would have a stroll around the village, which took about ten minutes. So we would do it again. The perimeter walls were guarded by ex-gurkhas, while on the inside the guards were mostly from former-Yugoslavia. There were bunkers to which we were supposed to head in case of emergency. In this contained little world it all felt quite safe. The security was tight. Afghans were kept at bay. The local ladies who cleaned our rooms did so under the watchful gaze of an armed Gurkha.

The security was not for nothing. Old Kabul hands told how in years gone by it had been possible to live relatively normal lives in Kabul, to walk the streets and visit restaurants. But normal life for foreigners in the city had become more and more hazardous during 2014, as Taliban attacks increasingly targeted them. Perhaps it was the drawdown of NATO forces elsewhere in the country that drew the Taliban to seek out victims in soft Kabul. A spokesman of the group hinted as much during an interview. At the beginning of the year, an attack on a popular Lebanese restaurant had left 21 dead, among them 13 foreigners. A couple of months later, nine had died in an attack on the Serena Hotel, including four foreigners. I knew several people who had been present in the hotel at the time, and who had been lucky to escape with their lives. They were election observers, like me. The risk was real and ever present. A few weeks after I left, the Green village itself was attacked, not for the first time. Four Taliban attackers were killed in the attempt, but they did not manage to penetrate the perimeter. None of the residents were harmed.

Scene of a Taliban attack

The one place where we had contact with Afghans was at work, at the Central Election Commission. To reach it, we had to go through multiple layers of security. Again, the risk facing us, while not uppermost in our minds, came to our attention every time we drove past the nearby blasted, pockmarked building from the roof of which the Taliban had attacked the Election Commission a few weeks earlier. We worked in a row of enormous hangers, with desks ranged along the walls at which pairs of election workers examined the ballot boxes from the recent presidential election, looking to see if all was in order, watched closely by representatives of the two candidates.

Reopening all of the ballot boxes was an enormous task, and it was a fraught undertaking. Box after box, ballot papers lined up on the tables, carefully scrutinised for any signs that the same hand may have been marking multiple ballot papers. It was tedious. The air in the hangers was foul, with fat ventilation tubes lying on the floor, blasting in cool air and blowing up the putrid dust into the air and into our lungs. Much of the time, I covered my face with a mask. Day after day for several hours.

The whole process was a farce. It often seemed quite random as to whether ballots or whole boxes were rejected, excluded from the election results. The cheats and swindlers made a mockery of the honest citizens who went to cast their votes, in many places at great personal risk to themselves. The Taliban forbade people to vote, sometimes cutting off the fingers of people who had the tell-tale ink mark showing they had done so. Sometimes stacks of fraudulent ballots were allowed to count, while the votes of genuine voters were excluded, all depending on the vigilance or determination of the party representatives and the international officials who oversaw the process. Just a game among the powerful elites in which the honest Afghan citizens counted for little.

And yet it was important. For behind all this charade was the threat of greater violence if the two candidates, Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, and their powerful backers could not reach an accommodation over the election outcome. Ashraf Ghani is a Pashtun, the largest and traditionally dominant ethnic group in Afghanistan, from whom the Taliban are also drawn. Abdullah Abdullah, who is of mixed parentage, is considered to be a Tajik. The stakes were high. In the end, the outcome of the exercise was not what counted. Rather it was all about buying time for the negotiators for the two sides to reach an accommodation. That Ashraf Ghani would be declared the winner seemed hardly to be in doubt. The question was could a role be found for Abdullah that sufficiently met his expectations?

One of my interpreters, a Pashtun, told me that for him there was no doubt that Ashraf Ghani had won. He saw that the process was a farce. He laughed about it. It made me feel sad. That the Afghan people were humiliated in this way. Most of the election workers were educated people. Many of them spoke English well. My interpreter friend was fluent in French too, in addition to Dari (Persian) and his native Pashtu. They were clever, educated, capable people, who had been asked to do a job which most of them knew was all a big circus. And so they did it. I was glad to have the opportunity, while the job was being done, to chat to them. With rare exceptions, they were unfailingly courteous, a crucial point in Afghanistan, where a perceived slight can lead to serious consequences.

I was especially struck by the communications among men and women. Most of the female workers wore scarves covering their heads, although some of them wore them a little back, revealing some hair. Few covered their faces completely. These were educated, middle-class, Kabul women. Their male colleagues naturally treated them with respect. But they were also familiar among themselves, chatting freely, often laughing. It was all quite normal. I remember one day working close to an elderly man who was forever making jokes, poking fun at the girls working nearby. One joke concerned a wife who had the last laugh when she caught out her errant husband. Everybody laughed heartily. It was the kind of harmless banter one hears in offices in Europe all the time. I realised that stereotypes about Afghanistan surely do not tell the full story. On the other hand, when our interpreters, drivers and security guards showed us pictures of their families, it was striking that they only showed themselves, their children, their brothers, but never their wives. Many of the foreign observers took photos inside the hangars. One day we were warned to be careful, as some of the men had taken offence that Afghan women were included in the shots.

In my brief stay in Kabul, I hardly glimpsed even the surface of Afghan society. I wanted so much to see more. Would it, could it be possible? My interpreter friend said he would have liked to invite me home to his village, but he realised it would not be possible, that our security people would never allow it. He related to me his own fear. Living in a village on the edge of Kabul, he was terrified of the Taliban returning. Everyone knew he had worked as an interpreter for the foreigners. He had previously worked for NATO. There were two men in his village who were former Taliban. He was afraid they might not really be so ‘former’. He spoke calmly about it, smiling as he did so. But getting out was very much on his mind. He had been disappointed that his former French military employers had not allowed him to move to France after five years working with them. He spoke about trying to make the long journey as an illegal migrant, collecting the large sum necessary for the journey, for the pay-offs to the traffickers along the way, from his extended family, in the hope that he would then be able to send money home to everyone. We came from different worlds, he and I, which barely touched each other. The life he led, the problems he faced, were beyond my imagining. Yet he took it all calmly and with dignity, and with a gentle smile on his lips.