My aunt and uncle have never approved of the self-proclaimed separatist republic, but as many around them have accepted it, their circle has grown smaller, making them feel even more isolated and angry. Grandma passed away in 2019. Their children stayed in Kyiv. My aunt and uncle converted their basement into a bomb shelter, dug in and slowly got used to their strange life.

They got used to not receiving any mail or money from the outside world, because Donetsk had virtually no international post office or banks. They got used to not having an airport after the Donetsk International Airport, rebuilt and gleaming for the Euro 2012, was reduced to rubble. They got used to the long journey through checkpoints, on an unmarked minibus, to see their children in Kyiv, or the wait for their children to arrive in Donetsk through the same checkpoints. They got used to the daily rumble of the separatists’ army trucks driving past their house from the nearby base. They got used to the fact that the rest of the world had largely forgotten about them.

But then Mr. Putin ordered his military into Ukraine, and the regional conflict they lived with stoically for so long grew into an international calamity, and the last of my aunt’s composure evaporated. Now when I call her, she is in tears.