‘Eventually, one gets used to anything:’ How Ukrainians have learned to live with war

Dnipro, Ukraine (CNN) — The residential block in Dnipro looked like someone had taken a huge bite out of it. Two whole apartments on the top floors were wiped out after a strike by Russian forces using an Iranian Shahed drone early last Friday morning.

Yevhenia Tsyplionkova watched anxiously as the firefighters began removing massive blocks of concrete from the collapsed roof.

Her mother was still under the rubble.

Using the dirt at her feet as a canvas, Tsyplionkova, 34, drew a diagram of the apartment for the firefighters, pointing out the location of her mother’s bed.

Trying to see if she could recognize the wallpaper of her mom’s bedroom amid the debris, Tsyplionkova said: “My mum was a meteorologist at the Ukrainian Railways.”

“She is a meteorologist. She is,” her friend corrected her.

Tsyplionkova was wrapped in a thick, warm blanket, cradling a cup of hot tea given to her by one of the many volunteers who had swarmed the area since shortly after the strike.

Their presence was a sign of how Ukrainians have become used to the realities of living through a war. Dnipro, a large city in central Ukraine, is nowhere near the front lines and yet the conflict is felt here on a daily basis. Dozens of people have been killed in attacks in the city since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, including more than 40 who were killed in a single strike against a residential block in January 2023. Strikes against residential buildings have become an accustomed part of life, so rescue services and volunteers know exactly what is needed in the immediate aftermath of an attack.

“We are in a state of constant readiness now,” said Lydmila Lashko, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional organization of the Ukrainian Red Cross Society. The Red Cross was one of several non-governmental organizations pitching tents and offering hot drinks, blankets, soup, as well as psychological and other assistance to the residents of the block that was hit.

“For a person who has lost their home and run out of the house with nothing, water, food and something to keep warm are the most important things,” Lashko said, adding that the Red Cross has response teams on duty around the clock.

As soon as they see a report of an alarm or an explosion affecting civilian properties, they head out to help. Last year, they were deployed 41 times in Dnipro, Lashko said. They’ve been out eight times so far this year. Yet despite the constant threat, people in Dnipro keep pursuing their lives. Shops and restaurants are open, with people out and about. Tsyplionkova said she considered leaving Dnipro after the war started but found she simply couldn’t go: this is her city. “I love it too much, I couldn’t leave,” she said.

Zhanna Vedmedieva, the chief psychologist at the Proliska Humanitarian Mission, a Dnipro-based NGO, stressed it was important for people to keep living, despite the hardships of war.

“Everyone is waiting for victory and peace as soon as possible, but no one knows when it will happen,” she said. “Life goes on, and you have to live here and now, despite everything. I try to highlight the value of life.”

Vedmedieva was also at the site of the building damaged in last Friday’s strike, walking around and checking in with its residents, many of them still in shock.

Escaping the war has become impossible. With more than 31,000 soldiers killed in the conflict so far, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky, almost every Ukrainian knows someone who has fallen. There is heartbreak everywhere.

The main road stretching through the village of Demydiv, just north of Kyiv, came to a standstill at noon on Thursday. People of all ages lined the road as the funeral procession for Oleksandr Savchenko, who was killed last week in a battle in southern Ukraine, passed by.

Many carried Ukrainian flags, and many were crying. As the procession drew closer, everyone, including the elderly and children, knelt down, their heads bowed.

Savchenko’s death was the eighth of a local soldier to have been announced in Demydiv since the beginning of the year. The procession stretched for hundreds of meters, with mourners in black walking side by side with men in uniform, as well as people who joined in as the procession went past to show their support.

‘The hardest part’

Yulia Murashkina has lost her home several times in recent years.

When the conflict first started in 2014, she and her family had to flee their home in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. The youngest of her three children, a boy, was just a few months old.

The family settled in Kreminna, a town just northwest of Severodonetsk in the neighboring Luhansk region. They had just about got used to living there when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

“We decided to go to Dnipro because it is close to our home,” she said.  
 
Dnipro has become a huge hub for people who have fled from Russian-occupied areas, with Dnipropetrovsk region now home to more than 460,000 internally displaced people.  
 
The family initially found an apartment, but when it became too expensive for them, they moved to a shelter for displaced families.

It’s a basic space – racks for drying laundry line the long, dark corridor that leads to the communal kitchen. Kids run around, launching themselves onto big couches in the entry foyer that doubles up as the common room.

Her son, now 10 years old, still attends online classes with his school in Kreminna, rather than going to school in Dnipro. Murashkina hopes the family will one day return to their home in Kreminna – even though she has no idea if their house is still standing.

“The hardest thing is getting used to the idea that you cannot go back home, to your usual life,” she said. “But eventually one gets used to everything.”

Some 4.8 million Ukrainians are officially registered as internally displaced people, according to data from Ukraine’s Ministry of Social Policy.

Like Murashkina, many have had to move several times in the past decade – first when pro-Russian separatists took over the eastern parts of Luhansk and Donetsk regions, then again after Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Ihor Omelchenko has been displaced twice in the past decade. He grew up in the village of Dmytrivka in the Donetsk region and said he left the village in 2014, after it was overrun by Russian-backed separatists.

The idea of aligning with Russia was not for him, he said.

He moved to the village of Novomykhailivka, not far from the demarcation line of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic, where he worked his way up to become the chief executive of a large agricultural company. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he found himself living on the front lines of the conflict once again.

“When it all started, I realized that I am a twice-displaced person and decided for myself that that’s enough. The only way out is to fight. So, I mobilized,” he said, adding that his two younger brothers were already serving at that time.

Initially, he wasn’t accepted because of his age – he is 49 – and lack of military experience. But as Ukraine began to need more soldiers, Omelchenko was able to talk his way into service and enlisted with the border guards.

His first assignment was in Mariinka, just seven kilometers (about four miles) from his home.

“I walked over every inch on the fields there,” he recalled. “The garden is now on the battle line. I fought on my lands.

“When I visited my village for the first time during the war as a serviceman, something snapped in me, even though the army dulls emotions,” he said.

He said he was part of a reconnaissance group and was flying a drone near the Russian positions.

“I flew through my fields… and just saw everything in the camera. Somewhere there was a tractor, somewhere there was a cistern, cultivators. The grain was smoldering in the warehouse, it has been smoldering for a year. And everything was ruined.”

Omelchenko said his wife had left for France on the day after the full-scale invasion began.

“She waved me goodbye, and everything was over between us. I lived with her for many years. I still have my brothers, I have a son, a daughter-in-law, my friends,” he said.

Vedmedieva, the psychologist, said the pressures of war have led some families to break up, while others have become stronger.

“People change. Sometimes you have to get to know each other again. The person seems to be the same, but sometimes they change. I’m changing myself,” she said, adding that the war has made people “become real.”

“It’s good, because you know who is next to you,” she reflected.

Omelchenko said the war had brought more clarity to his life.

“Who is close, who is not close. I won’t say that it’s difficult for me, I can’t say that everything went wrong, it just fell into place,” he said.

Late on Friday afternoon, rescuers finally pulled the body of Anzhela Havriushyna, Tsyplionkova’s mother, out of the rubble.

Havriushyna was 57 years old and had spent her whole life in Dnipro. She lived in the same apartment through all those years – first with her parents, then with her own family and most recently on her own.

When she was killed there last Friday, she became one of the more than 10,500 civilians who the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine officially confirmed as killed since the full-scale invasion began two years ago.

The real number, the mission said, is likely “significantly higher.”

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