After two years of war, Ukrainians are becoming pessimistic

IT HAS BEEN a long two years for Ukrainians, but for some the clock stopped the moment Russian tanks crossed the border. Residents of Hlibivka, a village 40km north of Kyiv, were trapped by the advance when the bridges behind them were blown up to save the capital. The Russian occupation marked the start of a nightmare for Olha Manukhina. Two days in, masked men jumped over her fence and kidnapped her husband and her son. She has not seen them since. She understands they are being held in a prison in southern Russia, two of thousands of civilian prisoners who don’t officially exist. It’s the uncertainty that gets her, she says, “the not knowing, the sense they are being left to die”.As war enters its third year, Ms Manukhina’s sense of limbo is increasingly common. Belief in an eventual “victory” remains—among 85% of the population, according to one recent poll. But opinions about what that means and when it will happen have begun to diverge strongly. A majority now believe it will take years. And for the first time since the start of the war, polling also suggests a majority feel that the country is heading in the wrong direction. Hopes of pushing Russia back to its legal borders are being eclipsed by a focus on survival, says Oleksandr Martynenko, a journalist and a former senior official. “We will be holding off the Russians all this year. The only question is whether we can.”