A person walks past The Wall of Remembrance of the Fallen for Ukraine in Kyiv on Feb. 23. The war reached the four-year mark on Tuesday, Feb. 24.HENRY NICHOLLS/AFP/Getty Images
Michael Bociurkiw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and founder of the World Briefing report on Substack.
Four years after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine is neither defeated nor unchanged.
More than 15,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed, and more than 41,000 have been injured. Questions about its sovereignty have given way to a different reality: a society reshaped by prolonged war, where resilience and exhaustion now exist side by side.
The tragic war in Ukraine has become tragically normal
I have spent most of these four years in Ukraine – likely more time on the ground than many accredited foreign observers – witnessing firsthand the painful shifts set in motion when Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, in an attempt to pull Ukraine back into Moscow’s sphere of influence. While Ukrainian forces have managed to contain much of Russia’s ground offensive in the eastern Donbas region, the Kremlin’s near-daily barrages of drones and missiles have inflicted widespread and lasting damage far beyond the front lines. And just last week, a patrol officer was killed and at least 25 people were injured when a homemade explosive device detonated in what officials described as a terrorist attack – potentially signalling a new phase of insecurity in western Ukraine.
My four years of living almost continuously in Ukraine have revealed a dimension of the war that rarely appears in headlines or statistics, a slower, quieter erosion beyond the destruction measured in territory or casualties: the fraying of the country’s social fabric.
Influential community figures and entrepreneurs have steadily left, hollowing out neighbourhoods and local economies. Families have been separated by impossible distances – and, in many cases, torn apart for good. Military cemeteries and memorial sites continue to expand, becoming permanent fixtures of daily life. In parts of the east, families are making the painful decision to move the remains of loved ones to safer ground as Russian advances threaten burial sites. Even in my own neighbourhood in the southern port city of Odesa, small businesses that survived the initial shock of invasion are now closing, worn down by uncertainty, frequent and prolonged power outages, and a decline in foot traffic driven partly by men staying home to avoid military police seeking draft evaders.
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Perhaps the most profound change is that nowhere in Ukraine can now be considered fully safe, as the distinction between front line and rear largely disappears. Last month, I experienced two separate waves of Russian drones passing over my Odesa apartment within the span of a week – the first one evading air-alert systems altogether. Moments like these reveal how completely the war has seeped into ordinary life. Four years on, the defining reality for many Ukrainians is not only the persistence of conflict, but the quiet normalization of living with constant risk.
While Odesa feels far from Kyiv, it is difficult to ignore signs that the political unity that characterized the early phase of the war is beginning to show some strain. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, once largely insulated from domestic criticism as political rivals rallied behind his wartime leadership, now faces a more complicated landscape. Allegations surrounding a multimillion-dollar corruption case involving funds intended for energy infrastructure – and individuals reportedly close to the presidential circle – have raised hard questions about accountability within his government.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky during an interview in Kyiv on Feb. 20.HENRY NICHOLLS/AFP/Getty Images
At street level, however, conversations have moved beyond any single scandal to broader concerns about governance and wartime decision-making, including appointments at the municipal level viewed by some as politically motivated. Tensions have also surfaced between Mr. Zelensky and the widely respected former commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, who has spoken publicly about differences over military strategy before he was reassigned as ambassador to Britain. In a previously unreported account, Mr. Zaluzhnyi said last week his office was raided in 2022 – an episode that underscored the uneasy atmosphere surrounding Ukraine’s wartime leadership.
None of this is to suggest that Ukraine’s allies should reconsider military, budgetary or humanitarian support – quite the opposite. Four years into the war, the lesson is that sustaining Ukraine requires not only continued assistance, but a more focused strategy to constrain the Kremlin’s ability to finance and prolong the conflict. That means intensifying efforts to target the revenue streams that fuel Russia’s war machine – from oil infrastructure and shadow tanker fleets to the networks that stretch from Thailand to Iran to Africa, enabling Russia to evade sanctions.
Failing to do so would not simply risk further Russian advances in Ukraine; it would invite the expansion of hybrid warfare beyond its borders, and prolong a threat that democracies, including Canada, will be forced to confront for years to come.