Kyiv, Ukraine \u2013<\/strong> Hennady Kolesnik never expected the full-scale Russian invasion to last this long.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are the worst and longest years of my life,\u201d the 71-year-old retired welder told Al Jazeera four years after the aggression that began on February 24, 2022.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n In the first days of the war, he and many Ukrainians were afraid Kyiv would be lost, as well as the third of their France-sized nation that lies on the left, eastern bank of the Dnipro River.<\/p>\n Tens of thousands of Russian troops, including elite airborne units and motor rifle brigades, occupied north of the Kyiv region, while the Kremlin\u2019s supporters triumphantly touted that the capital would be seized \u201cwithin three days\u201d.<\/p>\n Months later, \u201cwe were ecstatic about what we\u2019d regained\u201d after Russian forces withdrew from around Kyiv and were ousted from northern Ukraine, said Kolesnik, a grey-haired, pallid-faced and emaciated pensioner, clutching a cane.<\/p>\n He is recovering from a case of pneumonia that he feared he would not survive amid days-long power outages and disruptions of central heating caused by Russian drones and missiles during a cold spell, when temperatures plunged to as low as -23 degrees Celsius (-9.4 degrees Fahrenheit).<\/p>\n \u201cBut we\u2019re still standing, and that\u2019s the most important thing in a fight,\u201d Kolesnik, who used to dabble in boxing, said with a smile.<\/p>\n His wife, Marina, 70, agreed: \u201cNobody expected us to last that long, and we\u2019re still here.\u201d<\/p>\n However, Ukraine\u2019s 2023 counteroffensive failed to cut Moscow\u2019s \u201cland bridge\u201d from western Russia to annexed Crimea, and Russian troops keep inching forward.<\/p>\n But their advance is glacial amid staggering losses. Last year, they occupied less than 5,000 square kilometres (1,930 sq miles), or about 0.8 percent of Ukraine\u2019s total area, according to Ukrainian officials and Western analysts.<\/p>\n Overall, Russia controls about 19 percent of Ukraine\u2019s territory.<\/p>\n \u201cThe front line froze like during World War I,\u201d Nikolay Mitrokhin of Germany\u2019s Bremen University told Al Jazeera. \u201cSo far, Russia doesn\u2019t have enough forces or new technologies for a decisive and successful advance, but it can still squander thousands of [its soldiers\u2019] lives.\u201d<\/p>\n This month, Russian forces encountered a dual communication problem that reversed their progress.<\/p>\n Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX company shut down smuggled Starlink satellite internet terminals used by Russian soldiers, while Moscow\u2019s efforts to block the Telegram messaging app further disrupted coordination.<\/p>\n Ukrainian forces counterattacked, regaining about 200 sq km (77 sq miles) in the eastern Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions.<\/p>\n But in other front-line areas, the pressure is mounting.<\/p>\n Russian drones with attached optic fibre immune to jamming began reaching a heavily-fortified town in the southeastern Donetsk region.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has gotten a lot noisier. There are more outages; some locals are panicking,\u201d Sviatoslav, a serviceman stationed in Kramatorsk, told Al Jazeera. He withheld his last name in accordance with wartime protocol.<\/p>\n Moscow insists Kyiv surrender Kramatorsk and the rest of Donetsk \u2013 about 1,000 sq km (386 sq miles).<\/p>\n What could affect Ukraine\u2019s stance is further Russian strikes on energy infrastructure.<\/p>\n \u201cUkraine keeps the front line well, but the functionality of its energy system is hanging by a thread, which may affect a lot,\u201d Mitrokhin said.<\/p>\n Eighty-eight percent of Ukrainians think Russia\u2019s strikes are designed to \u201cforce them to capitulate\u201d, according to a survey by the Kyiv International Sociology Institute (KMIS) conducted in late January.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, two-thirds of those polled said Ukraine\u2019s armed forces should fight for \u201cas long as it takes\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople en masse are more ready to keep resisting [the invasion] than to capitulate,\u201d Svetlana Chunikhina, vice president of the Association of Political Psychologists, a Kyiv-based group, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n And even though there is a spike in depression, anxiety, and chronic stress among Ukrainians, there are no \u201cabrupt jumps\u201d in these conditions, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople adapt \u2013 including through depression \u2013 to the war\u2019s horrible circumstances; people keep functioning,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Ukrainians still hope for a better future, she said.<\/p>\n Only one in five polled Ukrainians hopes the war will end this year, but two in three are sure that in 10 years, Ukraine will be a \u201cthriving\u201d member of the European Union.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the literal realisation of the philosophic principle: \u2018get ready for the worst, hope for the best,\u2019\u201d Chunikhina said.<\/p>\n However, brain fog and cynicism are on the rise, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the Ukrainian public whose fight against the Russian aggression is largely fuelled by moral virtues \u2013 including high ones, such as altruism, patriotism, responsibility to future generations \u2013 cynicism could be really destructive,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n News brings little relief.<\/p>\n United States President Donald Trump has so far failed to deliver on his pre-election pledge to end the war \u201cin 24 hours\u201d.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Russian public figures who support the Kremlin still try to present the invasion as a step to \u201cprotect\u201d Russian-speaking Ukrainians.<\/p>\n Moscow-based analyst Sergey Markov claims that the war began on February 23, 2014, when pro-Russian protesters began rallying in Crimea, urging the Kremlin to annex the Ukrainian peninsula.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a peaceful uprising of the Russian people for freedom, peace and true democracy,\u201d he wrote on Telegram on Monday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Kyiv, Ukraine \u2013 Hennady Kolesnik never expected the full-scale Russian invasion to last this long. \u201cThese are the worst and longest years of my life,\u201d the 71-year-old retired welder told Al Jazeera four years after the aggression that began on February 24, 2022. Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list In the first days […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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