In Ukraine’s most remote eastern and southern communities, daily life in a year of full-blown war is difficult to recount. Natalya Tunik, a doctor in the small southern town of Novotroitske, in the Kherson region, says that normality “turned to ashes” even before the Russian army took control of her town in June. Despite the continuous drone of planes and shells flying overhead, Tunik explains how hard it was to comprehend Russia‘s invasion, even though there have been on-and-off hostilities since 2014. “When the invasion begins, you feel like you’re dreaming and just hope that you’ll [wake up],” she tells me via the messaging app Signal. “But then you realise that you won’t and that things will never be the way they were.”
Tunik describes what her town is like under Russian control. “Imagine going back to a pre-digital era. Limited electricity, internet and mobile connection. Payment in cash, with big interest rates for cash withdrawals. No law and order. No state reimbursement programmes for the pharmacy and other services. Queues, lots of queues,” she says. “It caused a state of helplessness.”
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