The well-worn Ukrainian settlement a few miles west of Kramatorsk is in the direct line of a Russian troop advance. But Anna Lunina – with her three youngest children playing around her – is determined to remain composed.

As an explosion sounds just over the horizon, her daughter Yulia, 9, reacts by throwing up her arms in mock not-again exasperation, a single braid of black hair bouncing as she glances up to the sky with a look of trepidation that seems more real.

“This is the guys saying, ‘Hello.’ It can start at 5 a.m. and go all day,” says Ms. Lunina, of the “noisy” shelling that has increased here and all along the arc of the Donbas front lines in eastern Ukraine, as Russian forces bid to encircle this industrial heartland.

“I try to be calm and not panic,” says the lanky mother of five in a “Star Wars” T-shirt, as her youngest son, Ruslan, 5, demands a hug. “They cry, but if I panic it will be worse.”

Three more booms reverberate loudly across the budding greenery of the early spring landscape, where rutted mud roads have finally dried.

“This is quiet – they are just starting,” mutters Ms. Lunina. “When the windows shake or the doors open, then we go to the bunker.”

Ukrainians in the Donbas are used to conflict, and have weathered war since 2014, when Russian-backed separatists seized portions of Luhansk and Donetsk. But the Russian invasion of Ukraine that began 72 days ago is of a different magnitude, and is redefining the lives of those few who remain here.

From church faithful, who distribute food and organize evacuations, to police officers registering an uptick in murders – and even ordinary citizens just trying to cope with panic and paranoia – all describe communities under extraordinary and increasing pressure.

“No safe place”

For these Donbas residents, the April 8 Russian attack on the Kramatorsk railway station, when it was heaving with several thousand would-be evacuees, was a shared and galvanizing event. Russian cluster munitions killed some 59 civilians, replacing any lingering sense of invincibility with a new and harrowing vulnerability.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Ukrainian Oleksii Karpov gives flowers to his wife, Ksenia Tarasova, on the eve of her birthday at a bus stop in the Donbas region's town of Kramatorsk, Ukraine, April 27, 2022.

“We understood that there is no safe place at all,” says Evhen Pavenko, an official of the Ark of Salvation Pentecostal church, which is housed in a Soviet-era theater near the train station, and has become a humanitarian aid hub and bomb shelter.

In his wallet, Mr. Pavenko carries a sharp piece of shrapnel the size of a fingertip, one that burst from the Russian cluster munition. It reminds him of why he saw so many dead Ukrainians on the train platform that day.

“It’s really hard to gather people to evacuate now, because everyone is hesitating,” he says.

At the station, he points out the blast pattern of one impact on the train platform, near where cloth flowers in the Ukrainian national colors of blue and yellow are tied to a rail, amid several children’s toys.

“I’m very surprised I was not traumatized in my soul,” says Mr. Pavenko. “There were many, many dead here.”

Hard times, at night

Among the casualties that day was Maryna, a 30-something mother trying to flee the Donbas with her two daughters. Yulia, 8, was untouched but traumatized by the explosions, and could not speak for hours afterward. Katya, 12, was severely wounded but survived, because a man threw himself on top of her before he died himself.

“He saved Katya,” says the girls’ grandmother, Nina Lialko, speaking in the town of Druzhkivka, south of Kramatorsk. The English teacher is distraught as she describes Katya’s multiple surgeries.

“After the death of my daughter, I am not afraid of anything,” says Ms. Lialko. She was the only person at Maryna’s funeral, and won’t leave the Donbas now. “It is very difficult, especially at night, alone, and I feel awful,” she says.

Dasha Serokurova says those moments at night were also the most difficult moments for her mother, who finally last week boarded a dawn evacuation van from Druzhkivka.

“From the very beginning, she was very anxious,” says Ms. Serokurova, wiping away tears as she waved goodbye to her mother. “With every air raid siren she would go to the shelter, which made her more nervous.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Cloth flowers in the Ukrainian national colors, blue and yellow, and some toys form a makeshift memorial at the Kramatorsk railway station, where a Russian attack on April 8 killed 59 civilians, in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, April 27, 2022.

The exodus of 70% to 80% of the prewar population has given these sandbagged and boarded-up Donbas cities the feel of ghost towns, adding to the sense of isolation for those who stay.

Members of the Protestant Church of Good Hope, who organize evacuations from Druzhkivka, say they used to do larger, daily runs of evacuees to the Kramatorsk rail station, until it was targeted.

They have replaced fear with faith, as risks increase. Several took part in rescue efforts at Kramatorsk, and have been thanked for providing aid and even coffins.

“We are believers, people of faith,” says Olena Severyna. “We trust God. We pray every day that, with God’s will, there won’t be a hair that falls from our head.”

“Of course we are afraid and nervous, but we are trying to concentrate on our work,” says her husband, Serhii Severyn.

Pro-Russian sentiment

Adding to the pressure has been continued, local pro-Russian sentiment, despite evident Russian military brutalities on front lines across Ukraine.

“They watch Russian TV, and believe that Ukrainians are attacking themselves,” says Petro Serhiievsky, who works for the Druzhkivka City Council. “Russian propaganda is very, very powerful” in the Donbas, as in Russia, he says.

“I am very surprised. There are still people here who do not feel anything, are not empathetic,” says Mr. Serhiievsky. In one example, during Easter, he says several pro-Russian residents broke curfew, set up a table outside, and drank noisily. They only stopped when soldiers came and shot into the air.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

The Ukrainian Ark of Salvation Pentecostal church has turned its basement headquarters, housed in a former theater, into a humanitarian distribution point and fortified shelter, in the Donbas region's town of Kramatorsk, Ukraine, April 27, 2022. Scores of wounded survivors and others stayed here after a deadly Russian strike on the nearby railway station on April 8.

Yet Mr. Severyn says he knows how the anti-Ukraine propaganda works, after living in Russia in 2012. “They used to show the Ukrainian government and activists as fascists, so it has been a decade,” he says of Russia’s self-declared “denazification” mission in Ukraine.

The result of the increased pressure in these towns is plain to see, according to police in Druzhkivka. Burglaries are up, and there have been two homicides in the past two weeks – one of a man who refused to hand over his car for an evacuation. He was killed with a hammer.

“Usually we have one murder a year,” says the head of the police station, who gave the name Dmytro. The police also caught an infiltrator whose tracking of Ukrainian troop movements led to a Russian attempt to strike a military convoy.

“We are trying to encourage people to leave,” says Dmytro. A “precise hit” on the power station that day, he says, which knocked out electricity for hours and played havoc with phone signals, is a sign that “it is not as safe as it was.”

The rising tide of uncertainty is raising levels of fear. At a food distribution in Kramatorsk, for example, where dozens of people wait outside an apartment block to receive potatoes, tinned food, and other staples from a church charity, a woman in a blue puffer jacket sidles up to a visitor with a camera and asks that photos not be taken.

“These photos can be used by Russians to target this place,” says the woman, who gave the name Nadiya. “A lot of people posted on social media the evacuations at the Kramatorsk train station, which assisted the attack.

“I don’t want to be targeted. This is no use to your job, or to us,” says the woman, her gray hair pulled back by a large purple hair clip. An air raid siren starts its wail.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Families carry food donations as Ukrainians remaining in the contested Donbas region prepare for war amid Russia's stepped-up offensive, in the town of Kramatorsk, Ukraine, April 27, 2022.

“I wasn’t at the railway station, but I was very close. I’m very scared after that,” says Nadiya. “People are different now. I can tell even by the people standing here: People who had anxiety before, it’s increased a lot.”

Puppies to play with

Among those carrying their food from that distribution point up the sidewalk is the family of Anna Lunina. The day of the railway bombing, they were waiting for a bus that would have delivered them to a stop across the street from the blast – but by chance it was delayed.

Now they are at home, listening to jet fighters overhead, and trying to determine if the explosions are getting closer. Last week, a neighbor buried a soldier son.

Children Yulia and Maksym, 8, take the steps down into the concrete cellar out back – built with the Stalin-era house in 1944 as winter storage for vegetables. It now doubles as the family shelter: Plywood on tires form three beds, and there is some food, jugs of water, and even a homemade antenna for a small TV screen.

Yulia complains that most of her friends have left, so “there is no one to play with.”

But there are three new puppies, which arrived soon after the start of the Russian invasion, and have wartime names: Bullet, Powder, and Hurricane – the latter for a multiple rocket system.

When were they born? Ms. Lunina jokes, “Probably at the first explosion.”

Reporting for this story was supported by Oleksandr Naselenko.

Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP

Vivienne Sievers protests outside the U.S. Courthouse in Los Angeles in response to a leaked draft of the Supreme Court's opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade, on May 3, 2022.

Anticipating a country that no longer allows a constitutional right to an abortion – and spurred on by a draft Supreme Court opinion that telegraphs this seismic change – blue states are strengthening their reproductive-rights laws. The move is not only to protect reproductive choice and care for women and girls who reside in their states, but also to offer themselves as a “safe haven” for those who live in states where abortion is expected to be banned.

In Connecticut, the legislature passed a bill last month to shield providers and patients from lawsuits taken by states where abortion is illegal. In March, lawmakers in Oregon approved $15 million for expanded abortion access – in part to help with an influx of patients from neighboring Idaho, which has passed a six-week abortion ban. And in California, about a dozen reproductive-rights bills are working their way through the legislature, while the governor and lawmakers are promising to enshrine those rights in the state constitution.

“There’s real recognition that abortion rights are in jeopardy across a large part of the country, so progressive states are looking to see what they can do to make sure abortion remains available in their states, and not just for residents but for those coming to their states,” says Elizabeth Nash, who tracks state policies for the Guttmacher Institute, which researches and supports reproductive rights.

Access to abortion will be drastically changed in the United States if the Supreme Court overturns the landmark 1973 abortion-rights ruling in Roe v. Wade. That appears to be where the court is headed, as indicated in a draft majority opinion that landed with explosive political and cultural force in a leak to Politico this week. With that, decades of clashes leading up to the high court will be fought in and between the states, which would shape their own policies.

In a post-Roe world, 26 states are certain or likely to ban abortion – across the South, in the middle of the country, and in the West, according to Guttmacher. These states either have pre-Roe laws on the books or in their constitutions, have “trigger” laws that would take effect once Roe is overturned, or have already passed highly restrictive laws – including removing exemptions for rape or incest and making performing an abortion a felony. Women in those states have three options: to proceed with unwanted pregnancies, to self-induce abortions through medication or unsafe means, or to travel to sanctuary states.

“Access to medication abortion is vital” and accounts for more than 50% of U.S. abortions today, says Ms. Nash. Travel is expensive and stressful. For someone in Louisiana looking for abortion access, the nearest state would be Illinois, a 1,300-mile round trip, she says. Three-quarters of abortion patients have low incomes and the majority are already parents, so many would not be able to arrange for child care or afford to take time off from their jobs or get themselves to a far-off destination.

And yet travel is occurring. Patients from Texas, which enacted a six-week ban last year (before many women may know they are pregnant), are journeying to as far as Washington and Maryland – with an estimated 1,400 traveling every month since the ban took effect in September. Wait times at closer clinics in Colorado and Illinois can be three to four weeks.

“In states that maintain access, capacity will be stretched very thin,” says Ms. Nash. “You’re just seeing a total disruption in access to care. You can see why progressive states are shoring up protections for abortion.”

California to create a “template” for blue states

California has long been at the forefront of reproductive rights. In March, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that makes access to abortion more equitable by eliminating copays and deductibles from private health insurance and the state’s low-income Medicaid plan. The plans must cover the entire cost. He calls recommendations from a recently formed advisory council and the resulting slate of bills currently moving through the legislature a “template” for other states, casting California as a “beacon of hope.”

More than 160 clinics offer abortion in this deep-blue state, but even that is not enough, say abortion advocates. Some 40% of counties have no such clinics, and California is also dealing with an influx of patients from other states. The bills would help fill these gaps by expanding capacity – funding more training of health care workers and allowing nurse practitioners with proper training to perform first-trimester abortions. Grants would also go to organizations to help low-income patients – including those from out of state – and providers who are not compensated for their work with low-income patients.

SOURCE:

Guttmacher Institute

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Another category of bills would protect patients and providers from civil liability judgments based on laws in other states – and bolster privacy protections of abortion-related medical records from law enforcement and third parties seeking to enforce abortion bans in other states. Connecticut’s just-passed bills would prevent the governor from extraditing someone to another state if what they did in Connecticut is legal. In April, Colorado’s governor signed a law explicitly protecting abortion rights and blocking public entities from denying those rights. As of March, a Washington law forbids the state from taking legal action against people seeking an abortion and those who help them.

“Unsettled law”

This kind of legislating is a response to any Texas-style ban in which private citizens can sue anyone suspected of assisting with an abortion. Abortion advocates are also worried about a Missouri-like attempt to make it illegal for a resident to go out of state to seek an abortion. That effort in Missouri failed.

Such cross-border actions would open up a new front on the abortion battlefield, says Cary Franklin, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law and an expert on reproductive rights and gender issues. She describes interstate-abortion legal action as “unsettled law” that has the potential to spawn many court cases.

“The irony is that [the Supreme Court’s] decision is going to create so much more controversy, and so much more confrontation, and so many more court cases,” she says. “The states are now going to be at war with one another.”

The ultimate way to protect abortion rights in a state, she and others say, is to anchor them in the state constitution. Although 16 states plus Washington, D.C., have codified reproduction rights in law, according to Guttmacher, future legislators can easily change such laws. Constitutions are much harder to change.

That’s why Democratic leaders in California, despite having a right to privacy in the state constitution that protects abortion, now want explicit constitutional protection. The overwhelming number of Democrats in the legislature means they could win the two-thirds required to amend the constitution, sending the amendment to voters in November. Last year, polling showed 79% of likely voters do not want Roe to be overturned.

“We know we can’t trust the Supreme Court to protect reproductive rights, so California will build a firewall around this right in our state constitution. Women will remain protected here,” the governor and legislative leaders said in a joint statement May 2. This fall, Vermont voters will also have an opportunity to vote on a constitutional change that protects abortion rights.

Even this, though, could still be vulnerable to a Supreme Court ruling, says Professor Franklin. If the court were to rule on fetal personhood – saying that a fetus has a constitutional right to life, as the anti-abortion movement argues – that would trump state constitutions, though it would depend on the wording, she says. “Fetal personhood is probably the end,” she says.

“Beginning” of a new phase

Abortion advocates and opponents describe a reversal of Roe as the “beginning” of a new phase in America’s painfully divisive and consequential debate.

“I think that this is not the end, but really just the end of the beginning of the pro-life movement,” says Jonathan Keller, president of the anti-abortion group California Family Council. The battleground will shift from the courthouse to statehouse, where state elections will “matter more than ever” as lawmakers shape reproductive policy.

He says it’s incumbent on voters who oppose abortion rights to back candidates who offer “real-world resources to women and families facing unwanted pregnancies.” That includes more funds for family resource centers, support for paid family leave, and better maternal care. “It’s going to give us a great opportunity to put our money where our mouth is.”

Susan Dunlap, president of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, also thinks this moment is a start, not an end. “I believe it’s the beginning,” she says of the legislation moving through the statehouse in Sacramento. Planned Parenthood LA’s coordination within the state and county, and its collaboration with medical schools for training and UCLA Law for lawyers and research, as well as its reorganization to be near airports and bus and train stations – all of this has been to prepare for the beginning after the end of Roe.

This is an unprecedented moment, and “we don’t know what’s coming,” she explains, calling this the fight of a generation. As she told reporters at an appearance with the governor this week, what she does know is that Planned Parenthood will do all it can to keep its doors open, and take care of every woman who turns to it and other providers.

“We will lift up the values of liberty and freedom, knowing that we will not be defeated in this moment or in the long term, because freedom is the future and foundation of our country.”

Workers built a giant, cloud-shaped display of 280,000 bursting red and yellow flowers in Tiananmen Square for this week’s May Day holiday, but stringent new controls to curb Beijing’s biggest COVID-19 outbreak meant relatively few people came to admire it. 

Overnight, Beijing required visitors to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test taken within 48 hours to enter the square – as well as parks and other popular public places – leading many residents to stay home or be turned away. With restaurants, gyms, shopping malls, theaters, galleries, and other entertainment spots shuttered, Beijingers had limited options for their days off. 

“We can’t go anywhere,” says Mr. Yu, a state-enterprise employee, on a walk with his girlfriend down a somewhat deserted main street. “We had plans for the holiday, but everything is closed,” he says, asking to withhold his first name. 

Improvising, hundreds of vacationers gathered for picnics on Monday along the tree-lined Liangma River in northeast Beijing. But police cracked down on the gatherings the next day, warning outdoor diners they’d be punished.

Beijing’s swift and strict containment drive has so far allowed the city of 21 million people to stop short of a full-scale lockdown like the one that immobilized Shanghai. Still, thousands of people are quarantined and nearly 50 neighborhoods in the capital are now labeled high- or medium-risk and sealed off. At the same time, ever-tightening restrictions on movement and activities are seriously boxing in the rest of the population. Beijing on Wednesday extended school closures, told employees to work from home, shut down hundreds of bus and subway stations,  and blocked people in risk groups from leaving Beijing.

Indeed, as Beijing and other big cities in China struggle to uphold Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s zero-COVID-19 policy, authorities are using a combination of persuasion, coercion, and appeals for self-sacrifice to bring about public compliance. 

On Thursday, Mr. Xi underscored that China must stick with its aggressive controls, which have succeeded in keeping China’s overall case and fatality levels low by global standards. The Communist Party’s powerful Politburo Standing Committee stressed the need to “resolutely fight against all words and deeds that distort, doubt and deny our country’s anti-epidemic policies,” according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Ann Scott Tyson/The Christian Science Monitor

Security guards man a newly created checkpoint at the entrance to a park in Beijing's Chaoyang District on May 1, 2022. A new requirement for park visitors to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test taken within the previous 48 hours caught many people unaware.

Extreme contact tracing

The capital city’s official toolkit for controlling COVID-19 outbreaks now includes near-constant testing, labyrinthine contact tracing diagrams, minute-by-minute location tracking, and dreaded “health code” pop-up windows, which block the green codes people need to move around the city.

Such tools are the key to dividing the population based on COVID-19 risk: Those who test positive or are possibly exposed must go to hospitals and centralized quarantine facilities or be locked down at home. Those who continuously test negative and manage to steer clear of risky people and places can keep circulating.

The outbreak, which began April 22 and has surpassed 600 cases, now impacts 15 of Beijing’s 16 districts, according to the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Almost daily, Beijing publishes long, detailed lists of new COVID-19 risk locations. Officials ask citizens to self-report should their paths cross those of an infected person – at Shanxi Noodle House in Xiaogaoshe Village for two minutes between 4:15 and 4:17 p.m. on April 21, for instance.

“Friends … anyone who meets the time and space of the following itinerary … please take the initiative to report … and cooperate with centralized isolation,” reads one typical announcement.

At a daily press briefing, Beijing officials also list, by number, every new positive case in the city, with details of where the person lives, works, their relationships, and health status. They publish maze-like contact tracing flow charts, with bubbles for each case, highlighting transmission chains and links to risky areas of the city.

“I definitely avoid the high risk and medium risk areas,” says Yu Lei, a Beijing resident and college graduate, who says the outbreak has complicated her job search. “If everyone is determined and avoids each other, we can stop more outbreaks and control it really well.”

Others largely ignore such case tracking. “I don’t pay much attention to it,” says Daniel, an office worker, typing on his computer at a park bench. “If we want to go to an area and it’s locked down, we can’t go there,” he says, asking to withhold his last name.

All the testing, tracking, and quarantine requirements come together in Beijing’s “health treasure” app. The app registers a person’s identity card, cellphone number, test and vaccination details, and travel history with the Beijing Big Data Center, and turns green, yellow, or red based on the person’s health status. Expanded restrictions have triggered a flurry of calls to Beijing’s CDC hotline over health code problems and app glitches, including pop-up windows that won’t go away after testing.

Ann Scott Tyson/The Christian Science Monitor

Yu Lei, a college graduate and resident of Beijing's Chaoyang District, said she avoids parts of the city designated as high- and medium-risk for COVID-19 on May 5, 2022. The outbreak is complicating her job search, but she’s confident the city will eventually contain it.

Heroic Case 218

Beijing’s propaganda apparatus is working overtime to highlight exemplary acts by citizens and party members fighting COVID-19. Case 218, an interior decorator, got a call at work one morning from Beijing’s CDC, telling him he was a close contact. But instead of returning to his housing compound, he sat outside in his car for 11 hours until he was tested and taken away to quarantine – sparing his entire community from lockdown. 

Case 218 “protected many strangers, so they were not disturbed by the spread of the virus,” said an article in the Beijing Evening News. In contrast, it said others “disregard local prevention … go to the card room to play mahjong every day without wearing a mask … organize weddings and funerals … and do everything possible to conceal and falsify the situation.”

Undercover reporters for state media also expose and scold bad behavior, such as a recent television news report that filmed unaware Beijingers panic-buying fruits and vegetables and jamming together in checkout lines.

Overall, Beijing’s approach has been to tighten controls gradually and move from voluntary to mandatory. Residents were first asked to mass test, then told that if they don’t, pop-ups will block their green health codes. This Wednesday, the city started requiring weekly testing for access to public facilities and transportation.

While some Beijingers complain testing is a hassle, most accept the need for it and appreciate the government footing the bill.

“The tests are free, and they are testing a lot to quickly clear the outbreak,” says Ms. Zhu, who is working from home while helping her second grade son with online studies. 

Beijing has learned from problems exposed in Shanghai, she says, withholding her first name. “Shanghai wasted a lot of time, but here the city reacted quickly and the measures are relatively strict, so this should be over very quickly.”

Taking another lesson from Shanghai, where the separation of children and parents for quarantine caused outrage, Beijing agreed to allow a family member to accompany each quarantined child. “Rather than saying that children are being quarantined, it is better to say they are on a ‘trip,’” advises an official release from Beijing’s Fengtai District. Hundreds of children are now under quarantine in Beijing.

For now, Beijingers are adjusting to the new constraints – and tensions – but hoping for relief soon. “We need to let the girls relax a bit,” says Song Huidi, sitting under a tree on a blanket and chatting with her friend while their school-age daughters draw. “This shouldn’t last long.”

Bryan Dozier/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

The Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S., Oksana Markarova, speaks to reporters at a coffee hosted by the Monitor at the St. Regis Hotel on May 5, 2022, in Washington.

Oksana Markarova, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, seems to be everywhere – on the Sunday news shows, on Capitol Hill, at swanky press dinners. 

But her most striking public appearance since Russia invaded her country on Feb. 24 may have come two months later, when she popped up in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. 

The photos she tweeted out tell a story: In one, Ambassador Markarova is clad in khaki green, standing next to the man who sent her to Washington last year – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, also in his trademark military green. In the other, she is the only woman seated at a table with President Zelenskyy and two other top Ukrainian officials. 

This brief trip home – her first since the Russian invasion – was deeply personal for Ms. Markarova, she made clear at a Monitor coffee for reporters Thursday. She saw her husband for the first time since he flew back to Ukraine, right after the war started. (Their four children have remained in the United States.)

“It was very good to be back home even for one day,” said the U.S.-educated ambassador, who previously served as Ukraine’s finance minister. She added, “It was surreal.” 

Ms. Markarova slept in her house, which is on the outskirts of Bucha – a suburb of Kyiv, where Russian forces massacred hundreds of civilians a month into the war. And she got to see her dogs. But her in-laws’ nearby house had been destroyed. 

Before her return, she had been seeing the war through her husband’s eyes – “through his videos, through talking to him,” she says. “It’s one thing to see it on video. It’s another thing to witness yourself,” she adds, noting that by the time of her visit, the bodies had been removed from the streets.

Ms. Markarova spoke, too, of her mother, who resisted government warnings to evacuate her home.

“I have to tell you, it was a special operation to convince my mom to move,” she notes, a rare moment of levity in our hourlong session.  

So how did the family get her mother to leave? 

“Well, my husband did,” Ms. Markarova says. “He gets all the credit.”

The C-SPAN video of the session can be viewed here. 

During our coffee, the ambassador addressed how Ukraine would define victory in the war; reports that Russia will soon annex more parts of Ukraine; the status of President Joe Biden’s massive $33 billion request from Congress for more aid to Ukraine; Russia’s frozen assets; and NATO aspirations.

Bryan Dozier/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

During the Monitor-hosted coffee with reporters, Ambassador Oksana Markarova took questions on a range of topics, from how Ukraine would define victory in the war with Russia to its aspirations to join NATO.

The following excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity: 

What does victory look like for Ukraine?

All we want to do is just live peacefully within our internationally recognized borders. In 2014, when Russia attacked us, we always said that we will never recognize the illegal annexation of Crimea and illegal attack on Donetsk and Luhansk. And even though we had all the legal rights to take them [back] with force, we never planned to do so. We always wanted to use diplomatic solutions to restore our territorial integrity. 

Essentially the victory for us is, one, we will have no Russian troops on our territory; when we will restore our territorial integrity and sovereignty; and when all those responsible for these horrific crimes will be [held to] account. And that’s when we will start rebuilding our country.

So does victory include Ukraine reclaiming Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk? 

Crimea was, is, and always will be Ukraine. Now, again, as our president repeatedly said, we are ready to negotiate at any point in time. We are not ready to surrender, and we are not ready to compromise on the principal issues for us. Now, how to get to that victory – that’s a question. 

On May 9, Russia reportedly plans to announce the annexation of more Ukrainian territory as it celebrates Victory Day, which marks the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. If that happens, how will Ukraine respond?

It’s very cynical of the Russian Federation to [do this] right now, when they brutally attacked a sovereign state; when they started a war in the middle of Europe; when they do exactly what Nazis did, with all the symbols, with genocide, with killing Ukrainians, only because we’re Ukrainians with, you know, ridiculous manifestations of antisemitism just recently by Minister Lavrov.

[Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recently dismissed the Ukrainian president’s Jewish faith, repeating the false claim that “Hitler also had Jewish blood.” On Friday, President Vladimir Putin reportedly apologized to Israel for Mr. Lavrov’s comment.]

Progress is slow in getting Congress to approve President Joe Biden’s massive $33 billion request for military, economic, and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Where does that stand? 

I talk to senators and congressmen and congresswomen on a daily basis. Time is of the essence here.

If you look at their public announcements, you will see that the previous bill that was adopted at the beginning of February – we already exhausted almost all that was there for the presidential drawdowns and other programs. 

There’s growing bipartisan talk on Capitol Hill of using frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine – a proposal that could open up the seizure of U.S. assets abroad. What is Ukraine’s view? 

We fully support the idea to use those frozen assets in the future to compensate Ukraine and to use this money for the rebuilding and reconstruction effort. ... It would be, I think, not only fair but actually very according to international law practices to use these frozen assets, to confiscate them and use them for the reconstruction processes.

Does Ukraine still aspire to NATO membership, despite the belief by some that Ukraine’s Western orientation contributed to Russia’s decision to invade? 

With the legacies that we have, you either are part of the Euro-Atlantic community and the West ... or you will be occupied or attacked by Russia. And it happened. 

You know, we were neutral for 30 years. It didn’t help us. Ukraine always said that we would like to join the European Union and we would like to join NATO. That hasn’t changed.

Reuters

Members of Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces honor fallen soldiers near Kyiv May 1.

On May 9, Moscow will again celebrate Victory Day, marking the 1945 defeat of Nazi Germany, but this year’s military display in Red Square will be more subdued than in past years. One reason is that the invasion of Ukraine has not gone well. Ten weeks into the war, the Kremlin may be wondering why some 200,000 Russian soldiers and better armaments have not defeated a much smaller enemy.

A big reason is that Russia’s superior numbers are no match for the superior motives of Ukrainian fighters. Not only are Ukrainians defending their country’s sovereignty and know their terrain well; they are more certain than Russian soldiers that they reflect the qualities of their society, such as equality-based rule of law.

While both nations have compulsory military service, far more of Russia’s troops are drafted, many of them unwilling conscripts in a war they barely understand. Bribery to evade the draft is common in Russia. In Ukraine’s army, forced conscription has been rare during the war because of a rush of volunteer fighters. The country’s democratic reforms have reduced corruption in the military and allowed commanders to grant more freedom for officers to act on their own. Valeriy Zaluzhnyy, the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, tells officers to “turn your face to the people, to your subordinates.”

The ability of Ukraine’s soldiers to collaborate and improvise comes out of the country’s young democracy. As President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told The Economist last month, “It’s not about who has more weapons or more money or gas or oil, et cetera. And that’s why we have to have agency. That’s what I understood, the first thing that I understood, that we the people have [agency]. People are leaders.”

If history is any guide, Ukraine will win this war. In their 2002 book, scholars Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam looked at wars since 1815 and found that democracies won more than three-quarters of them. One reason: An emphasis on individual liberties and rights results in better leadership in warfare. So far, Ukraine’s battlefield victories fit the book.