Kyiv, Ukraine – Snizhana Petradkhina, a 34-year-old florist, pulled her hands from her thick puffer jacket to reveal two thermal hand warmers.
“These are saving me today,” she said, standing beneath a flickering portable lamp in her stall in an underpass leading to a Kyiv metro station. “I am tired of feeling cold, and I am tired of no light. But all of Ukraine is tired of war. We want our children to have quiet nights – no drones, no explosions.”
Russia has repeatedly attacked Ukraine’s energy infrastructure this winter, causing mass power cuts in the Ukrainian capital, during a bitter cold snap that has left many residents without electricity and running water.
But war fatigue had long set in. Ukrainians barely react to the multiple air-raid sirens that ring out every day.
The conflict that began at breakneck speed almost four years ago, gripping the world’s attention, has gradually ground down into a brutal war of attrition.
And while Ukrainian, Russian, United States and Emirati officials struck positive tones after talks on Friday and Saturday in Abu Dhabi, saying they marked a first step towards peace, there was a large measure of scepticism on the ground.
“I don’t think the war ends tomorrow,” Igor Novikov, a former adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said from his trendy office overlooking Kyiv’s skyline. “Any conversation to end the war is better than silence, [but I am not] optimistic in the short term.”
The war can only end under two circumstances, he said. Either “Russia, as the aggressor, decides it wants the war to end, or enough pressure is placed on Moscow to force that decision”.
Neither of those options, he said, is likely to materialise until spring when Russia will have completed this phase of targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure during the winter months.
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