THE BREAKING AND MAKING OF UKRAINE / THE FINANCIAL TIMES OP EDITORIAL

The breaking and making of Ukraine

Trauma and exhaustion are balanced by pride and hope

Gideon Rachman

© James Ferguson

In a crowded Kyiv restaurant, phones begin to vibrate. 

It is a missile alert. Residents are urged to go to bomb shelters. 

But no one moves a muscle — apart from a waiter who ambles over to ask if anybody would like dessert.

That incident last week captured the strange mixture of normalcy and wartime emergency in the capital of Ukraine. 

It is a year since the Russian army was driven out of the suburbs of Kyiv. 

Although missiles and drones still sometimes hit the Ukrainian capital, as they did last week, Russia’s efforts to cripple Kyiv’s infrastructure have failed. 

The lights are on. 

The trams are running. 

Cafes that would not look out of place in Brooklyn or Berlin bustle with customers.

Things look refreshingly normal — except, of course, that they aren’t. 

Hundreds of miles to the east, a brutal war is raging. 

Kyiv station is thronged with soldiers in fatigues, heading to the front. 

The number of Ukrainian troops killed in battle remains a closely guarded secret — but unofficial estimates are that more than 100,000 troops have been killed or wounded. 

Many thousands of civilians also died in Russian attacks on towns such as Mariupol and Bakhmut. 

With airspace closed and the Black Sea ports largely blocked, Ukraine’s contacts with the outside world are severely restricted.

For many Ukrainians, the war now inspires a confusing mix of emotions: trauma and exhaustion on the one hand, but also pride and hope.

The physical, economic and social damage to Ukraine is huge and mounting. 

Few doubt that many thousands more will die before this war ends. 

But there is also a sense that Ukraine is finally breaking free from a tragic past — and that a future as a peaceful and prosperous European country is within reach.

Peace, if and when it arrives, will offer a chance to rebuild the country’s physical infrastructure. 

But some of the social damage inflicted by the war may be irreparable.

Ukraine’s prewar population is estimated at 37mn by Hlib Vyshlinsky of Kyiv’s Centre for Economic Strategy. 

Some 5mn-6mn Ukrainians, almost all women and children, are now refugees overseas. 

With men of military age forbidden from leaving the country, families have been ripped apart. 

The longer the war goes on, the more likely it is that many refugees will put down roots overseas, never to return.

With both Ukraine and Russia haunted by fears of demographic decline, Russia’s policy of kidnapping Ukrainian children has an added poignancy. 

That crime has led the International Criminal Court to bring charges against President Vladimir Putin. 

It epitomises the lawlessness and brutality of Russia — the main reason why so many Ukrainians are utterly determined to break free from Moscow’s grip.

The safe harbour that Ukraine is aiming for is the EU. 

While Russian imperialism is built on violence and cultural suppression, the EU represents a different sort of empire — one that you have to apply to join and is based on law and the voluntary association of nations.

Unlike Putin’s Russia, with its brutal determination to drag Ukraine back into its orbit, the EU has long hesitated about admitting the country, wary of taking on the economic and geopolitical risks involved.

But the war finally shocked Brussels into action. 

Olha Stefanishyna, the 37-year-old Ukrainian deputy prime minister in charge of European integration, says that the EU’s decision to grant Ukraine official candidate status just months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion was a transformative moment. 

“It gave the troops at the front — and the people in bomb shelters — inspiration and hope for the future.”

Ukraine hopes to begin the arduous process of negotiating EU entry later this year. 

But the event that all eyes are focused on is a much-trailed Ukrainian military offensive, aimed at driving Putin’s troops out of the 17 per cent of the country they occupy.

Some Ukrainian officials say openly that the coming months will be decisive in the war. 

Others reject that kind of talk. 

They worry that, if the counter-offensive stalls, Ukraine’s international supporters will apply pressure for a premature peace settlement that will leave the Russian threat undiminished.

Fear that the west’s support may be fickle hovers in the background of many conversations in Kyiv. 

But, whatever the current diplomatic situation, the bigger picture is that Ukraine has now achieved an international status that is unlikely ever to disappear.

Until this war broke out, Ukraine was often treated in the west with enormous condescension as a corrupt, “post-Soviet” backwater, whose claim to nationhood was recent and fragile. 

Those days are gone forever, swept away by admiration for Ukraine’s courage in fighting for its independence. 

A new generation of leaders, led by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have proved brilliantly effective in making the case for their country.

From inside a ministry surrounded by sandbags and guard-posts, Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, argues convincingly that his country has already achieved something historic. 

“Ukraine and Ukrainian identity was kept beneath the surface for hundreds of years. 

This war has helped to make us visible and we’ll never disappear again . . . 

It is regrettable that it has taken thousands of deaths. 

But that’s the way of the world.”