As the Ukrainian authorities stepped up security measures this week and President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia was plotting a “revenge” attack on Friday timed to the anniversary of its invasion, Maksym Bilinskiy was not terribly concerned.

“I’ve already gone through a rocket damaging my mother’s car near our house in Kyiv and a missile destroying a part of our summer house in Chernihiv,” said Bilinskiy, 19, a postal worker who was standing with friends at a coffee kiosk in Kyiv’s Podil neighbourhood on Wednesday.

One year after Russia’s full-scale invasion, virtually no one in Ukraine is untouched by the violence, destruction and bloodshed. But many said that they had found strength in the country’s shared sacrifice and the collective struggle for survival.

The foreboding that gripped Ukraine amid western warnings of war in the days before Russian tanks rolled across the border long ago faded. So did the acute chaos and confusion that soon followed. Now, the ways in which people process a war that has killed tens of thousands, made millions homeless and turned entire cities into ruins are as varied as Ukraine is vast.

Liudmyla Danilenko, 79, who was bundled up against the cold as she waited for a street trolley to take her to work, said the war was one ceaseless horror. Still, she was conscious that her parents had endured worse hardships. At any rate, she said, trying times are part of life. For her own well-being, she has been practising yoga. “Hope is the last thing to die,” she said.

New York Times News Service