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The tawdry routine of everyday misery of cold, darkness, and fear that grinds at the human soul: that is Vladimir Putin’s strategy of attacking civilians across Ukraine and could break the country’s will to fight on. But it’s unlikely.
Showers in darkness, a shave in cold water every morning, two small children who know the Russian president is trying to kill them, and dawn runs to a streetside stall for coffee and cocoa, the only morale booster for a new day. These are the routines of Kyiv residents like Oleksandr Merezhko. He knows he is lucky.
His four-year-old daughter Sophia is the same age as the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The elder, Lilian, is seven, so neither have known a world in which Russian troops are not fighting inside their country.
Sophia can tell an outgoing missile blast from an incoming Shahed drone attack.
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