‘It’s not life, it’s just hell’: Grief-stricken Ukrainians still determined after a year of war
In a windswept graveyard, Viktoria mourns her husband.
She stands sobbing amid row after row of freshly dug graves.
Each one is marked with a photograph and a regimental flag.
“You are my life. You’re my heart, my air, I love you,” she cries.
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Ruslan was killed a few days ago when he was hit by a tank round in eastern Ukraine.
His three-year-old twins still don’t understand their daddy is never coming home.
Viktoria says: “We just told them their father became a star in the sky, and their father is looking after them from the sky.”
“They’re asking me for a phone to call, and your heart starts bleeding, because you don’t know what to say, you don’t know how to explain to a child.
“I just tell them their dad is busy and can’t answer their call,” she adds, her voice trembling.
Ukraine does not disclose figures for its dead, but it is a number that’s rising fast.
And so too is the rate of casualties.
At a rehabilitation centre in Dnipro, soldiers try to overcome their injuries.
Oleh was lacerated by shrapnel and doctors have warned him he may still lose his limb.
As his physiotherapist tries to manipulate more movement into the joint, he tells me that Russian aggression has only made this nation stronger.
“For a long time, Russia was trying to hide our history. That’s why we’ve become closer to each other, and we value life more than before.
“We value our families and loved ones. After the war ends, Ukraine will blossom once more. Definitely.”
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What Vladimir Putin thought would be a lightning-quick conquest has morphed into an exhausting duel of artillery – with no end in sight.
And the fighting in the Donbas over the past year has been absolutely relentless.
It also appears to be getting worse in the face of a new Russian offensive.
In places like Chasiv Yar, near Bakhmut, most people have left. It’s easy to understand why.
Every day now, the artillery is getting closer.
In the shattered and broken communities of this region people are weary – and mostly reliant on aid parcels to survive – as the fighting rages around them.
After a long year, the cost of this punishing war is increasingly only measured in pain and suffering.
Oleksandr, a pensioner, says he does not know sometimes how he keeps going.
“I’m not sleeping during the night, and not sleeping during the day, so I’m exhausted.
“It’s not life, it’s just hell – just suffering.
“I’m very sensitive and I’ve got health problems. I want to leave, but my wife doesn’t.”
Back at the graveyard, new plots are being excavated for soldiers that have not yet been killed in combat.
Viktoria is far from the only Ukrainian mourning the loss of a loved one.
It is a bleak picture.
And, of course, it is just one military cemetery – in a country which is bleeding for its survival.
