Stories such as these—businesses working with local government and the military, under little or no direction from Kyiv—abound. Kostia Bielov, an anti-corruption activist, told me how he still believes his local government in Zaporizhzhia is making mistakes. Perhaps it hasn’t distributed aid in the absolute fairest way, or has risked humanitarian supplies it has received by holding them in one location, he said. So he circumvents it to the extent that he can, working with a friend from Ukraine’s Armenian community to pool donations received in cryptocurrency from abroad to purchase real items such as hygiene products and baby food and deliver them to villages where people can no longer work because of curfews or limits on public transportation.

Yet he still has to work with the authorities in plenty of instances, despite his misgivings. He knows many people in the government, mainly because there is no generational or social gap between current Ukrainian local politicians and civil-society leaders. During the first parliamentary elections after the 2014 Euromaidan protests, and then again during polls in 2019, the so-called professional politicians who had dominated Ukrainian politics since independence were voted out. (In fact, Zelensky’s party suffered criticism for actively excluding professional politicians from its ticket.) Now the same generation is both inside and outside the government: They went to the same schools and worked together, so even political opponents have each other’s phone number…

Old grudges have also been forgiven. After imposing martial law, Zelensky had the right to appoint mayors and governors across the country, but he has mostly opted to reappoint those who won election, including those from opposing political parties and even those whose loyalty to Ukraine itself was in question. Kryvyi Rih, the president’s hometown, offers perhaps the best example. It and the nearby town of Dnipro each elected leaders who were against Zelensky, albeit on opposing sides of the country’s political spectrum—Dnipro’s leader was considered more pro-Ukrainian; Kryvyi Rih’s was considered pro-Russian. They used to openly fight each other, and clashed publicly with the president. Both told me they now speak daily, and both swear absolute loyalty to Zelensky’s government. Or they would, they said, until the war was over.