Here is today's map of the military situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council:
“Suddenly, we are the enemy,” Irina whispers to me from the bottom bunk as our Moscow-bound train pulls into Russian border control at around 3am. A year after war broke out in the Donbass, the Kiev-Moscow train is one of the few remaining passenger rail lines linking Russia and Ukraine.
“We never had any problems before,” says Irina, a sturdy Ukrainian woman in my carriage. Born in a village in southeast Ukraine, she studied in Moscow in the 1970s before settling in the Ukrainian capital. Now in her mid-fifties, she is employed in the Kiev office of a Moscow-based pharmaceutical firm. Irina has spent 30 years traveling between the two cities.
“I work for a Russian company,” she mutters hesitantly to the female border guard examining her documents. After a lengthy pause, the guard hands back her papers. “We can all get on after all,” the Russian replies. “There’s so little good news these days.”
Irina has happy memories of Moscow — the city of her student days where she met her husband. For years she would attend university reunions in the Russian capital, where old friends would catch up over semi-sweet wine high up in the Moscow suburbs. But that was before the Maidan. “It’s all different now,” she sighs.
Ukrainians and Russians have been torn apart by a war few understand. Kiev and Moscow, once cities with shared histories, are now unrecognizable to one another. On the 13-hour journey between the two capitals, passengers try to make sense of the conflict.