By AFP | 2025-04-22

KYIV -- Kateryna Halushka often sits alone, staring at her phone waiting for a sign of life from her boyfriend, a Ukrainian soldier fighting at the front.

As is true for thousands of others, the Russian invasion has turned her love life into an anxious wait for messages, calls and short-lived reunions.

Those Ukrainians are stuck in what Halushka called a constant state of waiting.

"I've got a new social role," the 28-year-old told AFP in a Kyiv park. "I am now a woman who waits."

Halushka struggled with the idea of sitting still.

She worked two jobs and volunteered as a paramedic -- away from the front since she suffered a severe injury.

"That constant waiting state is quite stressful ... you wind yourself up thinking something bad happened. You just sit there, waiting for a call, waiting for a message," she said.

She already has lost one boyfriend in the war, killed at the front.

That pain would come back anytime her current partner did not answer for a day or two.

"You live with the constant understanding that he may go to fight and not return. You constantly live with the idea that he may die and you'll never see his body again," she said.

'Live in the real world'

"Your brain never comes up with anything good. It doesn't imagine that your boyfriend shot [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, or that the war is over," she added.

Putin on April 19 announced a short Easter ceasefire to run over the weekend.

But there is no sign Moscow and Kyiv are anywhere close to striking an agreement.

Daria Yedamova, whose husband Artur was serving in Kharkiv province, said she was also pessimistic.

"I am hoping for him to come back; I wish we could have a forever peace. But we live in the real world," she said.

Cheered on by Artur in video calls, she has been knocking down walls to renovate a flat they bought in Kyiv, all while taking care of their two young children.

"We're laying the groundwork for the future," she said.

But with no permanent end to the fighting in sight, the separation is taking its toll.

Lina, the couple's 11-month-old daughter, does not always recognize her father on the rare occasions they meet up.

He enlisted just a few months after she was born.

'Dad will come'

Artur's son, three-year-old Taras, constantly longs for him.

"He says, 'Dad will come,' 'we will sleep together,' or 'we will read together,'" Yedamova told AFP.

Families of serving soldiers regularly travel across the country for short reunions.

Halushka's boyfriend receives occasional permission to come to Kyiv on leave.

She was looking forward to honoring a small tradition when she next saw him -- stir-fried kung pao chicken at a food court in Kyiv, followed by takeout strawberry cake covered in pink icing.

She clings to such fleeting moments of happiness.

The next Russian attack is a matter of "when, not if," she predicted.