Ukraine in Focus

By Svitlana Morenets

It is 2015 and I am 16 years old. I am carrying a portrait of a fallen soldier in my hands. His name is Oleh Rybachok. His body is being carried in a casket behind me. We are in the town centre; people bend their knees as we pass. Men place the casket in front of his grief-stricken parents: the war has claimed both of their twin sons in less than a year.

The mayor steps on to the stage. He struggles to speak, he’s on the verge of tears. ‘The war is to blame for this tragedy,’ he says. ‘May those who started it and those who support it drown in the rivers of tears shed by our grieving mothers and wives.’ His words are captured on video as he uses the moment to address both the Ukrainian government and world leaders. ‘Do everything possible and impossible to stop this terrible tragedy unfolding in the east of our country,’ he says.

It is June, and the Minsk-2 agreements were signed five months earlier, in February. Supervised by France and Germany, they meant to enforce an immediate ceasefire along the frontline in Donetsk and Luhansk. Western leaders shook hands, said the deal was done and soon forgot about the war in Donbas as a distant nightmare. But here I was in the summer, holding a portrait of a young man, watching his parents weep. I was asking myself: does not the world see that the ‘peace deal’ didn’t work? Or did they just choose not to care?

That day often comes to my mind even now, almost a decade later. Years of the war in the Donbas region made me believe that Ukrainians will always have to fight Russia alone – that nobody really cared about our struggle for freedom. Everything changed in February 2022. I learned that this was not true. I saw how thousands of people outside Ukraine supported us and aided our fight. Vladimir Putin thought he would take Kyiv within days, but it is still standing after 912 days of full-scale war. Many don’t grasp the sheer magnitude of Ukraine’s strength in standing for so long against the largest country in the world. Ukrainians couldn’t have done it without our allies.

Yet, fatigue is setting in among western leaders, who grow weary of funding a war miles away from them. Before the Kursk offensive, Ukraine was being pushed into negotiations which would probably end on Russian terms. History would repeat itself. After more than a year of bloody defence, Kyiv finally came up with an operation which is likely to be Ukraine’s last chance to change the tide of this war. The success of this Kursk incursion has shown what Ukraine could achieve without constant constraints on how we should fight.

Yet we are still confronted with restrictions and ‘red lines’ from our partners. Why is Ukraine not allowed to fight Russia on equal terms? Such restrictions – which are based on the fear of escalation – only aid the aggressor. Now is the moment to let Ukraine strike deeper into Russia with American ATACMS and British and French Storm Shadow long-range missiles. It’s time to approve new aid packages before the current ones run out. The delay of the last large US aid package turned the Ukrainian front line into a massacre. Ukraine cannot afford to lose more lives due to indecision.

Tomorrow is Ukraine’s 33rd independence day and the fight for it is far from over. But this war should not drag on indefinitely: with appropriate support, with a plan more strategic than support for ‘as long as it takes’, with no hands tied behind its back, Ukraine can prevail. The outcome of this battle will impact lives far beyond our borders and for generations to come. With continued western help and the courage to push for stronger, more decisive action from allied leaders, a just peace may be delivered much sooner.

I don’t want to carry another portrait.

Yours,
Svitlana

In Pictures:

Pokrovsk, Donetsk region: ‘I will leave the house. I’ll leave everything. I’ll come to you. I promise you,’ a grandfather tells his granddaughter, who is crying in his arms on a train that is about to leave the city. Russian forces are six miles from their home. (Credit: Frontier, Andriy Dubchak, Nadia Karpova)

Quote of the week

‘A few months ago, many around the world would have said that a plan for an operation like the one in the Kursk region was unrealistic, crossing what was supposedly Russia’s most inviolable red line. That’s precisely why no one heard about our preparations. … The world now sees that everything in this war depends solely on courage – our courage and that of our partners.’

– Volodymyr Zelensky called on Ukraine’s allies to be ‘in sync with Ukraine in this resolve, then Russia will have no other option but to pursue a just peace’.

The war in numbers

Ukrainians in the country who say their future is there:

86%

For the under-30s its 74%

Number of Russian orthodox churches in Ukraine:

8,000

The church will be banned for its Moscow links in nine months.

Rheinmetall stocks fall due to uncertainty of Germain aid.

5%

The arms-maker’s stock had risen 28% in the past two weeks.

A note from the author: Thank you for your interest in this newsletter. I hope it helps you to understand my country – and the war – better from a Ukrainian perspective. If you enjoy the Ukraine in Focus newsletter, please forward it to someone you know: you can sign up here. My writing for The Spectator can be found here. All feedback is welcome: svitlana@spectator.co.uk