Bleak midwinter

War seeps into everyday life in Ukraine but the show must go on

- Shaun Walker Kharkiv region

The ammunition boxes stacked on the stage opened up to reveal figurines of angels and an infant Jesus lying in his manger. Six actors sang plaintive carols, accompanied by readings of the brooding poetry of Kharkiv writer Serhiy Zhadan. The audience sat, transfixed by the intensity of the spectacle.

The nativity play, performed on a recent evening at Kharkiv's puppet theatre, was a reminder that conflict has seeped into the fabric of almost everything in Ukrainian life over the past four years. “We can’t just put on comedies and escape from reality,” said Oksana Dmitrieva, the nativity play’s 48-year-old director. “The stage is a mirror, and we have to live through our emotions again, but this time from outside ourselves, together with others,” she said.

Dmitrieva admitted, however, that dissecting the darker emotions on stage did not always translate to a lighter mind in real life. “Sometimes it’s possible to immerse yourself in the work, but sometimes I also lose my bearings and I wonder: ‘What comes next? What should we talk about? What buttons should we press?’ I guess that’s what every Ukrainian is living through now.”

This winter, the fourth since Russia’s full-scale invasion, threatens to be the bleakest yet for Ukraine. Trump, during his first year in office, has proved much more receptive to Moscow’s talking points than to Kyiv’s, Russian troops continue a slow but grinding advance in the Donbas region, and missile attacks on energy infrastructure have left cities without power for hours on end, day after day. There are holes in the budget, a crisis in conscripting new recruits and - perhaps most devastatingly - the absence of a plausible positive outcome on the near-term horizon.