Last time Kashyna visited her war-torn homeland was last summer, when she and her partner drove there in a car bought by volunteers in Sweden. Then it became – once again – clear to her what her relatives and friends are going through.
The robot attacks, the air raid warnings, and the power outages. It's tough and mentally exhausting. Ukrainians have lived with it for three years, says Kashyna, who is vice chairman of the Nordic Ukraine Forum and works on sustainability issues on a daily basis.
Sad date
Kashyna came to Sweden 16 years ago to take a master's degree, but has often been back in Ukraine. She says she is proud of the Ukrainians' courage and resilience and describes the three-year anniversary of the full-scale invasion as "a sad date".
So many lives have been erased, so much suffering has been caused, she says.
And what has happened in recent weeks is very alarming, or frightening. The talks between the USA and Russia, which are held behind the backs of those affected, are dangerous. They legitimize war criminal Putin, who is wanted (by the International Criminal Court ICC).
What do you think of Volodymyr Zelenskyj, who was called a "dictator" by USA's Donald Trump?
He is the democratically elected president who has stayed and led Ukraine during the difficult years. According to the constitution, elections cannot be held during wartime, and Zelenskyj has the support of a majority of the population. It's astonishing that the US president claims otherwise and plays into Russia's hands.
Misses "everything"
The anger towards Russia is shared by Tanya Lytovchenko, an IT engineer, and Iana Zelenska, a director from Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine. Lytovchenko came to Sweden from Vuhledar in Donetsk 12 years ago. She says that the night of February 24 three years ago was the last time she slept well.
My mom has spent three years in a bomb shelter, without seeing the sun. And now the Russians have occupied Vuhledar and taken her Ukrainian passport, she says.
A whole generation is destroyed. And the talks between Russia and the USA are absurd, like when parents decide whom their children should marry.
When the war broke out, Lytovchenko went to a church in Stockholm where collections were being organized for Ukraine. She saw stations for women, children, the elderly, and military personnel – but none for animals. This led to her starting Paws of Peace, an organization that regularly sends food and other supplies to animal shelters in Ukraine.
Angry with Trump
The commitment is repeated in Iana Zelenska, who ran a theater in Kharkiv with her actor husband and daughter before the war. But when the war started, it turned out to be too difficult to take their son, who is wheelchair-bound, up and down to the bomb shelters.
We got help from friends to flee to Sweden. It's good, but I would have rather stayed and cooked for the soldiers at our theater, she says.
What do you miss the most?
Everything. Our house in Kharkiv, the culture, my work at the theater. And my friends who are dead.
The feelings on the third anniversary of the war outbreak are characterized by anger.
Right now, I'm angry with Trump. I don't understand why he says what he does. And Russia is a monster.
On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, but the Russian forces met strong resistance, and a multi-year war began. Russian forces entered the neighboring country already in 2014, which led to the illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and a simmering conflict in Donbass in the east.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyj's mandate formally ended on May 21, 2024, after five years in office. The fact that a new presidential election was not held the previous autumn is due to the war laws in Ukraine.
Russia's propaganda media have since described it as Zelenskyj "defiantly" clinging to power. President Vladimir Putin has tried to suggest that Ukraine does not have a legitimate leader, or that there are legal obstacles to negotiations. Putin has also previously spread lies about the Ukrainian government being a "Nazi regime" that commits genocide against ethnic Russians.
USA's new president Donald Trump claimed during the election campaign that he could end the Ukraine war quickly. In recent weeks, his administration has upset the Western world with statements that NATO membership for Ukraine is not currently on the table and that a return to the country's borders from before 2014 is "unrealistic". Trump has also initiated a dialogue with Putin about Ukraine, which Kyiv and Europe see as being shut out of, and without any basis claimed that Zelenskyj is a dictator.
