On February 24, 2022, Marina Lisina wanted to give a pastry class. She set the tables the night before and was looking forward to the children coming to her private youth theater in Konotop, northern Ukraine. The actress and mother of two had trouble sleeping that night. He heard a noise and thought it was the tram. “At seven in the morning a friend called me and said, turn on the TV, there’s a war,” recalls Lisina, who now lives in Bonn. Konotop is about 80 kilometers from the border with Russia. Two years ago, the city was surrounded within a few hours by Russian troops. There was resistance, but the forces were unequal, the Ukrainian army retreated. In the first days of the war, Lisina fled to her mother on the outskirts of the city, where she met Russian soldiers : “I ask them, what are you doing here?”. And the answer: “We came to get President Zelensky. As if Ukraine was not an independent state,” she says indignantly. The invaders had believed that they would be welcomed with open arms and were surprised that it did not happen,” says the woman. with millions of her compatriots, in the EU. Her husband was left behind.

Putin was surprised in Crimea

Today she still wonders: “I didn’t expect that there would be a big war. How can something like this happen in the 21st century in the heart of Europe?” Lisina accuses the West of seeing Ukraine as a pawn and a bargaining chip: “Europe watched and waited to see if they will kill us or not”. This is not true of all governments, of course. The US, Britain and others were supplying weapons to Kiev even before the Russian invasion. Germany joined late, but now heads the list of states that support it. Many were surprised at the time, including Ukraine itself. The Russian offensive had already begun eight years earlier with the annexation of Crimea. On February 27, 2014, armed and masked men in uniforms without national emblems seized the parliament and the regional administration of the peninsula. President Putin later admitted that it was Russian soldiers. Many were surprised at the time, and Ukraine itself.

Ukraine was seriously weakened. Opposition protests in Kiev forced pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych to flee to Russia. The new pro-Western government did not dare to defend Crimea with weapons. The West also advised Kiev to show restraint even when a hot war broke out in the eastern Ukrainian coal mine of Donbass in the spring of 2014. There were no tough sanctions. Russia put its own people in charge of pro-Russian forces in Donetsk and Lugansk and secretly armed them more and more. The West tried to cool the conflict through negotiations and Ukraine did not impose martial law.

“Weak leadership in Kyiv”

The war was called an “anti-terrorist operation”. “All this meant that for many the war seemed far away, most people in Ukraine did not realize that it was their war,” says Lisina. For Maxim Kosub this is not the case. The interpreter from Kiev recalls how in June 2014 he asked the severance of relations at a rally in front of the Russian embassy. “I understood then that this is a war,” says Kosub. He went as a volunteer to the front in Donbas and was wounded. He was part of a patriotic minority that came into conflict with Russia. After the Russian invasion in February 2022, is fighting back in the Ukrainian army. Should Ukraine have fought for Crimea? Many in Ukraine believe so. “I’m tempted to say they should have tried,” says Susan Stewart, a special on Ukraine issues by the Berlin-based think tank Science and Politics Foundation (SWP). However, he makes particular reference to “weak leadership in Kiev” at the time. It is also true that Russia deployed troops along the Ukrainian border in 2014 and was already threatening a massive invasion then.

The Ukrainian army in Crimea was not in a fighting spirit with large sections defecting. In the years between 2015 and 2022 the war in Donbass seemed to have frozen, but in reality it was a trench war with thousands of casualties. Why did the West believe that the situation will remain like this, did not supply Ukraine with heavy weapons and continue to plan large projects, such as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline with Russia? Susan Stewart explains this with the belief that integration could prevent wars in Europe.

What if Ukraine loses the war?

Since 2022, Ukraine has changed a lot. “We continue to stand and fight for Ukraine, even if the price is very high,” says soldier Maxim Kosub. The army has changed a lot, it has become more professional, although there are still problems. “Society has shown a lot of self-organization,” he says. And as an example he brings the volunteers who have been supplying the army for ten years with cars, night vision goggles and medicine. Kosub believes in a long war with many casualties and a Ukrainian victory in the end.

Looking back, he says: “Everyone underestimated Putin and his willingness to ignore the rules.” But Marina Lisina also believes in victory. The war made her tougher, more uncompromising towards Russia, the Russian language and culture, as she admits. She would like to return to her husband at some point, but then she would no longer live in Konotop, but in western Ukraine. “There is more security there, Russia will remain a dangerous neighbor.”

Susan Stewart does not dare to make predictions beyond one year. He does not expect “surprises” in Russia. With Western support, Ukraine will endure, but the exhaustion after ten years of war is increasingly felt. “Very little thought goes into what would happen if Ukraine loses,” says the expert. The cost would be “much higher.”