Earlier this summer, Sofia Andrukhovych unveiled her novel Katanankhe, sparking ongoing discussions. As expected, readers have split into familiar camps: some offer praise, others remain uncertain, and a few voice their critiques. Yet, what intrigued me was something else entirely: Katanankhe stands as one of the first contemporary novels to depict life in post-war Kyiv. The narrative centres on the daily struggles of an ordinary Ukrainian family after the war, yet it was penned amid the war’s chaos. The duration of the conflict and when Russia might cease its missile terror remains an unsettling question that no one dares answer.
Indeed, what will happen when the war ends? The first word that comes to mind is “reconstruction,” full of promise yet daunting in scope. There will be much to rebuild—mostly from scratch. By January of this year, the KSE Institute estimated that damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure had soared to $155 billion. The housing sector took the hardest hit, with over 250,000 buildings either destroyed or damaged. The toll on cultural heritage has been devastating as well. According to the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy, by June 2024, Russia had obliterated 1,085 cultural landmarks. Healthcare, too, remains under siege, with 1,629 medical facilities damaged and another 214 completely destroyed. And that’s just part of the story. The sheer magnitude of what needs rebuilding is staggering, but tragically, it feels premature to even begin imagining it.
Another question lingers: what will happen to us? How will we feel when the war finally ends, when the news of victory breaks? Each of us will have a unique response, no doubt as varied as the stories we still hear from Ukrainians about the moment they realised a full-scale war had begun.
I remember my great-grandmother sharing her own experience from World War II. She told me how she wept when she heard the war was over. A young man from the village had rushed through the fields, spreading what should have been joyous news. Yet the women working there sat down on the furrows and cried. My great-grandmother’s tears weren’t for happiness; they came from the stark realization that she was now truly alone—left with two small children and no breadwinner to return home. My great-grandfather Dmytro had gone to war in 1942 and never came back. Everything I know about him comes from my grandmother’s stories, and even she only knew him through the stories of others. She was just over three years old when the war ended, and she never got the chance to be with her father.
And what’s happening now? Sadly, history is repeating itself. The war is stealing childhoods, leaving kids orphaned and forcing them to grow up too quickly. Many Ukrainian families are living in limbo, holding on to hope as they wait for any word about their loved ones who have gone missing. The numbers are bleak—at least 42,000 soldiers are currently reported as missing.
Some hold on to hope, unwilling to think about the worst. Others know their loved ones have fallen, yet can’t even bury them properly—there’s nobody to mourn. This is the harsh reality we live in.
We must never lose sight of the enormous price we are paying for every inch of our land. The cost is staggering—Ukrainian lives. And in the heat of counter-offensives and operations to reclaim territory, that price only rises.
Still, the dawn will come. What it will bring for us, however, remains a mystery…
