With Russia massing troops on the Ukraine border and the U.S. warning that an invasion could be imminent, herszenhorn's reporting trip sought to paint a picture of the war that has been going on for nearly 8 years, killing 14K+ people and displacing 730K
The “Ukraine Risk Assessment” from Axel Springer, POLITICO’s parent company in Berlin, was blunt: “Donetsk is rated as,” it said. “Travel to Donetsk should be avoided until further notice ... Artillery and aerial bombardments occur regularly and civilian casualties are common.”As I read the assessment, I was halfway to Kostyantynivka, a small city in Donetsk that is the last stop — and the closest to the front line of the war in Donbass — on the seven-hour train from Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.
As I arrived in Kostyantynivka on the “fast” train from Kyiv, there were soldiers in and outside the station, on street corners, and crowded into a Georgian café across the street selling coffee and the cheese-stuffed pies called, or canteen, where a full meal costs about $5, three soldiers were topping off their lunch with vodka shots.
And yet throughout our visit, there was also a sense that ironically, Putin’s tactic of creating a frozen conflict in Donbass was backfiring; the status quo in many ways has been faring better for Kyiv than Moscow. Slowly but surely the Ukrainian military has been growing stronger, acquiring new weapons like armed drones from Turkey, and benefiting from NATO’s support, such as the U.K. helping to build new naval bases.
Leading us through ankle-deep mud to see his soldiers in their trenches, Senior Lieutenant Mykhaylo Novitskyi, who has a 1-year-old son, Timur, said he was not worried about a Russian invasion, and that the West also should not be intimidated by Putin. In July 2020, a cease-fire between Ukraine and Russia provided some respite. But things began to worsen again this past spring when Russia massed troops on the border. Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe say that by September, the numbers of cease-fire violations were back to pre-July 2020 levels. Now, with political tensions high, the violence has spiked even further.
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