We visit Irina and Pavel on a bleak day in early March. Their apartment, located on the sixth floor of a soviet-style building on the outskirts of Kiev, consists of only three rooms. In the center of the living room stands a small coffee table on which a framed picture of a young man is surrounded by candles and flowers. The young man on the photo is their son Ivan, 20. He is currently serving in the Ukrainian military and is currently deployed in Sewastopol on the Crimea. With Russia invading the peninsula, his parents fear that he might never come back. “If our government decides to fight the Russians, my son and his comrades will die for sure”, Irina says as she is wiping tears from her cheeks.
Currently, thousands of Ukrainians are losing sleep over the fate of their loved ones, just like Irina and Pavel. The conflict with Russia has been escalating since Russia took first steps towards an annexation of the Crimean peninsula.
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