As the Russian war against Ukraine rages on, a growing divide separates those whose lives are deeply shaped by the war from those who go about their daily routines as if all of it were happening in a separate reality. Veronika Puhach, the wife of a Ukrainian soldier, shared her personal journey, offering insight into the challenges of bridging this widening gap.
I’m on the Dnipro-Kyiv train heading home after visiting my husband. The last time we saw each other, two months ago, it was for less than a day in a frontline city. This time, we spent almost four days together in a village miles away from the frontlines, and I truly felt how rare and precious that time together was. In civilian life, four days wouldn’t mean much, but since my husband joined the army, time feels completely different for me.
A man around 65 sits next to me on the train. He overhears me talking on the phone about the wounded. A few days ago, my husband and I were sharing carp with them, and today, they managed to leave their positions at the last minute with the wounded, heading to hospitals. There are casualties, but their names haven’t been released yet. The man asks if anyone in my family is fighting, and I tell him it’s my husband. I ask about his family, and he tells me his son died at the front.
We talk about the war, about life, and about our Ukrainian society. I ask him if he feels there exists a certain “social divide,” given that so many people seem untouched by the war, going on with their lives as if it were happening in another world. He responds with a sharp sense of conviction, saying he feels it deeply. “This is when loved ones become strangers, and strangers become loved ones,” he reflects. His son fought and sacrificed his life for Ukraine, while his sister, living in Russia, now labels her “family from Dnipro” as Nazis. They haven’t spoken in years, and there’s nothing left to say.
A recent study by the civil network OPORA (“Support” in Ukrainian) and the Kyiv School of Economics paints a fairly optimistic picture: Ukrainian society is not deeply polarised, and the social distance between soldiers, their families, and civilians is low. Yet, I still sense the divide. Families directly affected by the war remain a minority in our society. For some, the dead are nothing more than distant mentions of unknown people on social media, while for others, they are loved ones, family, and friends. For some, the biggest concern is choosing a restaurant for a date, while others don’t know when they’ll see their loved ones again.
In reality, our society may not be as polarised as it first appears. True polarity suggests two opposing sides, but the stories of Ukrainians are far more complex and layered. Even within the same family, one person might wholeheartedly support a relative in the army, while someone else, facing the same situation, is consumed with thoughts of how to avoid mobilisation. The divide isn’t always clear-cut—it’s often shaped by individual experiences and personal struggles.
I appreciated the village where I visited my husband because it was a place where complex stories unfolded. Civilians, soldiers, military families, and veterans are all deeply intertwined. There are soldiers who have fought on the front lines for two years in the infantry but still listen to Russian music. There are former soldiers who left the army unofficially after enduring tough battles and now actively support the military. Families have loved ones on the front lines. Civilians offer housing to soldiers and help them, yet when these soldiers leave, they take everything they can carry, including stove bricks and internet cables.
In areas where the war is close, the stories are often harrowing, yet there may be enough shared experiences that the social divides aren’t as pronounced as in Kyiv. The real issue, however, may lie in the fact that many people in the capital, living in relative safety, forget that Ukraine is fighting for its very survival against a far greater enemy: Russia.
Every day, our fellow citizens risk their lives, get injured, and die while hundreds of thousands of families worry about them. Ukrainian society hasn’t fully shifted into wartime mode or a wartime economy, almost as if everyone is clinging to the desperate hope that the war will soon end.
As a result, some continue to lead relatively peaceful lives, while others are enlisted for an indefinite period, remaining in service “until martial law ends.” Meanwhile, there are also those who find themselves trapped somewhere between these two starkly different realities.
Even in a large city, far from the frontlines, there are ways to connect with the reality of the war. You can join volunteer groups assembling drones, weave camouflage nets, or even switch careers to contribute directly to the country’s security and defence. I asked my husband how he thought the social divide could be bridged. Half-jokingly, he replied that everyone should be mobilised—including women.
We both know that mobilising everyone is neither practical nor possible, so we agreed that, at the very least, to close the gaps, we need to gain the experiences that civilians lack. In other words, since the war is happening, we have to live through it in some way and contribute to strengthening both our state and our army. We must avoid the mindset that the war is only happening in the east, with rocket and drone attacks over the cities. We cannot afford to think the war won’t affect us or our families and that we can simply wait it out, as we would with bad weather. The strangers defending us must become more than just that—they must become close, like family, because our survival depends on it.
