Away from it, bodies littered ruined buildings, forests and roadsides during the war’s second year. Russian barrages repeatedly blasted civilian targets, frequently reducing apartment buildings to rubble, flames and smoke.
Communities disappeared, replaced by grim desolation. Relatives wept over the open coffins of their loved ones. The young and old, and their pets, lost their homes or fled them.
The conflict has killed more than 10,000 civilians and wounded nearly 20,000 others, the United Nations says. The cost of reconstruction is likely to run into hundreds of billions of dollars.
Among the casualties, Ukraine expects that more than 20,000 people, many of them soldiers, will have a limb amputated. Many are victims of anti-tank mines, aerial bombs, missiles and artillery shells.
Images of women learning to fire guns and cadets trying on gas masks are a reminder that Ukraine would like to get still more people in arms. Amid war weariness and the physical and emotional strains on families, a broader mobilization to push back Moscow’s forces is a sensitive issue.
Despite the bleakness, there are snatched moments of joy: dancing in a subway station, students celebrating graduation, people taking a dip in a peaceful lake, a couple sitting on a park bench, and Christmas celebrations.
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