Last Sunday night, on the eve of the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kyiv Mozart Orchestra was putting on a special performance. It had come to a hotel ballroom on the west bank of the semi-frozen Dnipro river to play a haunting series of pieces by Ukrainian composers. Hundreds of Kyivans, many in evening gowns and formal attire, had defied the minus 10 degrees on the capital’s streets to attend. For a magical hour they escaped into another world.
Among the audience were soldiers and their families. Many others were thought to be watching on the frontline via smartphone. “They say it’s like therapy,” the compere, Lada Tesfaye, observes as the young musicians take their bow. Kyiv is about 400 miles from the frontline, but there was little lingering beyond the encore. An hour and a half later the air-raid siren resounded through the empty streets. Soon after came the “thud” of air defences as the first of that night’s Russian drones came into range.
It is a reflection both of humanity’s remarkable ability to adapt, but also of Ukrainians’ steely resolve, that most Kyivans treat the nightly attacks as a mere disruption to a good night’s sleep. Some even stay up, listen to the hum of the drones and watch the sound and light show as they are targeted by small arms or old Soviet anti-aircraft batteries. The night before the concert saw the most intense drone attack of the war — more than 260 across Ukraine.
When I salute the collective sangfroid to Pavlo, a young soldier, he seems perplexed I even thought it worth noting. We meet in a Crimean Tatar restaurant where the words “Crimea will be free” are emblazoned over the exit. They reflect the outwardly defiant mood of the times, not that anyone really thinks the peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014, will be returned. Pavlo will not give his full name but does share his army sobriquet, Chewbacca. It was earned on the frontline by dint of his shagginess after weeks under fire.
“Most Ukrainians now hear a drone attack and say: ‘Oh, that’s nothing, it’s not a ballistic missile,’” he says. “Or if it is a ballistic missile, they just check to see what type it is and say ‘Oh, it’s only a Kinzhal [a Russian missile] . . . so no need to worry.’”
Such insouciance reflects the reputation the Ukrainians earned for resilience in those bleak existential weeks for their country after February 24 2022. The spirit truly seems undimmed. But of course that is only half the story. History’s wheel is turning fast in Kyiv. After holding off Russia’s vastly superior forces three years ago Ukrainians are in a terrible bind. They fear they may be about to face one of two grim scenarios: being compelled to sign a deal that rewards the aggressor or trying to fight on without their primary military backer, America.
As Donald Trump openly flirts with abandoning them, many Ukrainians insist they can keep fighting. “The only fair way to stop the war is to stop the attacker,” Pavlo says. “The other way is to force us to surrender — and the Trump administration is choosing this variant. We hear from them on the news that we are meant to think Russia is good now and we can make a deal. What deal? That would legitimise a crime.”
He is by training a computer engineer, one of the tens of thousands who poured out of Ukraine’s universities in the decade before the full-on war. In late 2021 he had planned on going trekking in the Himalayas. Instead he stayed at home and joined up as an army medic on the first day of the full-scale invasion. “For now we are just doing our best. We need to hold the Russians off for a few more rounds.”
Such doughty resolution is the mantra in Kyiv. Soldiers, MPs, officials, writers, all insist they could hold out against Russia for at least six months more even without more assistance from America. Maybe they could. The war is increasingly one of robots and drones. Ukraine has become a world leader in designing the latter.
Mustafa Nayyem, a government adviser, who is a national hero for sparking the 2013-14 protests that led to the ousting of the then pro-Kremlin leader, argues that the loss of American matériel would be “significant but not critical”. He suggests that much of the weaponry that poured into Ukraine once it had shown it was not buckling to the Russians is not so essential now given the changing nature of the war.
“This is a drone war and we are experts at manufacturing them. We even have a school for how to make drones.” Drone components from the US, he adds, are used “sparingly” and can be substituted. His greatest concern would be if the US stopped supplying intelligence, although he does not think this likely.
But even with intensified European backing, a prolonged fight without US support would be hard to sustain. One senior MP from Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s party suggested it would mean gradually losing more and more land. And this is already a society under tremendous strain, with rifts between those who fought and those who haven’t — and those who stayed and the seven million who have left.
Few in Ukraine know more about these trends than Ella Libanova, the country’s best-known demographer. On the morning of the anniversary of the full-scale invasion, as a dozen heads of government and state made a fleeting visit to Kyiv to show support to Zelenskyy, the 75-year-old professor at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine was in her office working. To mark the grim milestone, she lit a candle at home before heading to work.
She opens an impromptu lecture on the state of the nation on an improbable note. She quotes Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to London for much of the second world war. He was asked by Moscow, she recalls, to describe the mood of people on the street after German air raids. “And he said: ‘I don’t see panic. I don’t see fear. I see the mounting chill of British fury.’ I love this phrase so much. We also are not afraid. We also have a rising fury.”
Her concern is not over the spirit of the population, which she says is as united as it has ever been, but its shape. The demographic map of Ukraine shows it has gone from a classic pyramid in the early 20th century to a mushroom. This mainly reflects a steep decline in the birth rate in the 1990s in the economic upheaval that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. But it is being exacerbated by the exodus of Ukrainians since February 2022.
“We are losing the young and the educated,” she says. “Only 6 per cent of those who have left are over 65. If we lose the generation who have left we will lose the youth. When the hot phase of the war ends, not only will we have an ageing population, we will have a shortage of labour.”
Libanova blames Russian disinformation for stirring up talk of divisions, but says the government has to act fast to stop splits widening. “If we want people to return we have to be in constant touch with them. We feel the situation differently to those abroad. My sister lives in Prague. When she reads of an air raid she cannot understand why I haven’t moved to Prague, and yet I say it’s fine here.”
“Many Ukrainians abroad fear that when they return people will not be friendly . . . And then there is every mother’s fear of their sons being mobilised.”
Mobilisation has been one of the greatest challenges if not mis-steps of the war effort. The government has continually struggled to recruit enough troops. Officially only men over the age of 25 can be drafted. But now it is trying to entice 18-24-year-olds by offering enhanced terms of employment to serve on the frontline. It has also removed some of the exemptions it had in place for workers in particular fields. Some offices have been told that they have to halve the number of workers they have with particular exemptions. Almost overnight, one Kyiv-based economist tells me, half the men in a certain category at her employer disappeared and were now hiding at home to avoid effectively being press-ganged into service.
Yulia Klymenko, a leading opposition MP, believes the government has badly mishandled recruitment. There are other simmering scandals too, not least over the production by a domestic manufacturer of tens of thousands of faulty shells. But Klymenko also says that Trump’s upending of America’s policy on the war has been a tonic for Zelenskyy’s ratings. In the space of a few days Trump outraged Ukrainians first by opening bilateral talks with Putin without any Ukrainians at the table, and then calling Zelenskyy a “dictator” and seeming to suggest he had provoked the war.
“Trump did the impossible,” Klymenko says. “He reunited the political elites as Putin did when he invaded in 2022. Americans can say whatever they want. We will do what we think is right.” Zelenkyy’s ratings are in the high fifties — rather higher than the 4 per cent Trump claimed this month.
After a difficult few days for Zelenskyy, including a shouting match with one of Trump’s senior aides, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the president seemed in good heart last Sunday when he bounded on to a stage for his “anniversary” press conference. For two hours he fielded questions mainly on the contentious first draft of a deal to share mineral resources with America. The one-time comedian clearly still enjoys performing. Was he insulted by being called a dictator, he was asked. “Only a real dictator could be insulted by the term dictator,” he deadpanned.
These are dire times, however. Before signing off on an agreement over minerals his aides managed to remove the more onerous terms from Washington’s original draft. Zelenskyy’s aides hope that by signing the mineral deal he will win favour with Trump. But the agreement his team approved had no mention of the security guarantees Zelenskyy had wanted. The nightmare for Kyiv is that the concession is banked, with little in return, and that notwithstanding European nations’ pledges of support Ukraine is again on the brink.
“Sometimes I dream of going back to my civilian life,” Pavlo, the young soldier, told me. “But it’s only my dream. America chooses a dangerous path. Their politics are to blackmail a wounded country. It’s all about money and interests, not values.”
“We have one million soldiers. They could be the heart of a new European army. In the meantime we just have to kill as many Russians as we can.”
For all the fighting talk, most Ukrainians are exhausted. Tymur Tkachenko, the head of the Kyiv City Military Administration, stoutly says he is in awe of the determination of Ukrainians. A former elite tennis player, he says Ukraine is close to “match point” when it comes to its success in uniting the nation. But, he adds, that is not match point over the Russians. “People are very tired,” he says. “We’ve lived with this for three years. My six-year-old always sleeps in the wardrobe, not her bed. She thinks it’s more secure.”
Privately, the prevailing view is that the tract of eastern land occupied by Russia will not return. There is increasing speculation of an end within months to the “hot phase” of the war. Many Ukrainians would probably welcome peace even though they assume that no settlement can resolve the Russian threat for good. For now they are just waiting to see which way the great powers move. They are in limbo.
At about 10pm on Wednesday, the day the government agreed the mineral deal, the air-raid siren went off in the capital. In the central square overlooked by the 11th Century St Sophia Cathedral, a couple went on walking their little dog — and a man calmly continued scraping the ice off his car.
Alec Russell is the FT’s foreign editor
Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning