Ukrainians are peculiarly relaxed about Russia’s troop build-up

IN THESNOW-BLANKETED town of Vovchansk in eastern Ukraine, where 20,000 people live just five minutes’ drive from the border with Russia, Sergei Sergienko lists his tribulations. Jobs are scarce, so he must leave at 5.00am for construction work in Kharkiv, the nearest city, for which he earns 700 hryvnias ($25) a day. His father is in recovery after covid-19 put him in hospital. Absent from Mr Sergienko’s list is the fear that Russian troops might sweep into Ukraine across the border down the road. “I try not to fill my head with worries about war, there are enough problems without it,” he says. Besides, he adds with a shrug, it is not something he can control.Ukraine is deeply wary of threats to , so one might expect widespread alarm at the sight of 100,000 or so Russian troops at the border, and at the muttering of , Russia’s president, about “military-technical” action. Things are not so simple. Ukrainians have weathered eight years of war against troops backed by Russia in the breakaway “republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk, which have claimed 13,000 lives. But they have also lived through rhetorical twists and turns, the making and breaking of cease fires, and countless predictions of horrors that usually never came. In such a world, scepticism is a form of wisdom.