In the streets of kyiv, disillusionment and concern are palpable, as the Ukrainian army struggles to achieve decisive victories against Moscow’s troops.
“Unfortunately, we know the strength of the Russian army too well.” The observation of Andreï, around thirty years old, falls like a blade. Like the majority of Ukrainians, when the counter-offensive started more than four months ago now, he did not have great expectations but his stomach sank a little more. Like all the men here, he is forbidden to leave the country and he fears the moment when the army will eventually, he is sure, call him.
Especially since the results are not very good. The Ukrainians have only managed to recover very little ground and the weather will soon complicate operations. Andrei knew that the counter-offensive would be very difficult, and very deadly too. “Every meter we recover costs us a lot of lives. This is why I understand why the counter-offensive cannot go as quickly as we would like”he said.
There is Andrei’s disillusionment and anguish, and then there is the anger that we also hear in the streets of kyiv. That of Arina for example, who condemns both the Ukrainian officials who make totally unrealistic statements and the media who reproduce them and forget the harshness and reality of the war. Because this Kievan no longer counts her friends who died in the war. She lost her husband there too. So, if you ask her for her opinion on the counter-offensive, she is quite categorical.
“When we read here in the newspapers: ‘magnificent, we have liberated a village!’, no one says how many people had to die to liberate it. How difficult, very difficult it is!”
Arina, resident of kyiv
The fear of international abandonment
“I am sure that we will eventually succeed in liberating our landscontinues Arina. But how long will it take? I don’t know. One year, two years, more?” Next to him, Svitlana, 58, struggles to express herself without breaking down. His son, a soldier, died this summer at the age of 23. “I lost my child. But I consider that all the soldiers are also a little bit of my children”, she says as tears roll down her cheeks. Then she pulls herself together, because she wants to be able to articulate what worries her: seeing her country abandoned by the international community. “If you do not provide us with the necessary weapons, then it will be mothers in Poland or elsewhere in Europe who will see their sons die”warns Svitlana.
In Ukraine, with the counter-offensive stalling, but especially the conflict in the Middle East, anxiety has risen several notches on this subject. “We can clearly see that international support is crumbling”, notes Svitlana. Then she concludes, fatalistically: “I’m not sure we’ll ever get through this anymore. But we have to keep hoping. Even if it’s just hoping.”
Disillusionment in Ukraine around the counter-offensive – A report by Maurine Mercier