KYIV – It is the sixth time I have been in Ukraine in the last 18 months and it doesn’t get any easier. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
As we drove into Kyiv this time there was an eerie sense of normalcy to the place. More traffic. More people on the streets. Busy restaurants. Later curfews.
One might not know a horrendous war was happening a few hundred miles away – a war that was still trying to hit the heart of this country with Russian missile strikes. You’d think this was a place at peace.
But when we looked a bit below the surface here you can tell that this months-long tragedy continues to touch all.
The member of parliament underscored the feeling of loss capturing the whole country. She said when officials talk about a new counteroffensive against the Russians what they’re really hoping is that the generals will be “smart.” And the “losses will be minimal.”
The long war is touching and harming this country in all sorts of ways. We were at a gathering of families whose loved ones had been missing for a year or more, held by the Russians. Not because they were soldiers, but they happened to be in way of the occupation.
An injured Ukrainian veteran at the Irpin rehab center. (Simon Owen/Fox News)
We visited “off-duty” soldiers trying to work their way back to health after devastating injuries on the front line. One was a former actor. Another a contractor in his civilian life. Bodies wracked by enemy blasts, shelling and gunfire. At a rehab clinic outside of Kyiv backed by U.S. private funding.
And we have, via Zoom and other means, talked to soldiers on the frontline. One official, for example, with the unit scoring some early gains re-taking occupied territory around the battered town of Bakhmut. He was happy to tell us of their modest success. But was careful to say that no major moves would be made until the lives of their men and women were secure.
Because – as it has from the beginning of this war in February 2022 – it always comes down to the people.
A Ukrainian mother in Kyiv. Her three children wear a t-shirt remembering their beloved father killed in the war. (Simon Owen/Fox News)
You can talk about offensives and counteroffensives; strategies and maneuvers; weapons and defensive systems; coalitions and alliances; politics and borderlines.
Or wars going back centuries and centuries.
DONETSK OBLAST, UKRAINE – MARCH 22: Ukrainian soldiers in a trench in the direction of Bakhmut, 22 March 2023 (Photo by Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images) (Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
When I come back to Kyiv I always like to talk with the regular folks to hear how they feel.. A driver. A doorman. A waitress. A student. A mother.
I can report that there is weariness.
But with nearly all there remains a determination to finish this horrible job. To beat back the Russians and their mastermind Vladimir Putin. And get on with life.
And the hope that America and others will hang in there and help them achieve victory. And freedom.
Considering all, not too much to ask.
