Lviv, Ukraine – Anastasiya Buchkouska, a 20-year-old pupil from western Ukraine, gently brushes away layers of snow and ice from her father’s grave.
She pauses, wanting up on the {photograph} mounted to the headstone. His face bears a putting resemblance to hers.
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When her father was youthful, he had served within the navy. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he was referred to as up virtually instantly and despatched to the entrance line.
Contact with the household was sporadic at finest. They clung to temporary messages and fleeting indicators of life till sooner or later in September 2022, all the things fell silent.
For seven months, he was formally listed as lacking. Buchkouska mentioned she held on to hope, although deep down she feared the worst.
When affirmation of his demise lastly got here, grief hit arduous, however amid the calls for of struggle, she mentioned she had little alternative however to “take care of it”.
Her uncle was killed across the similar time.
She centered on caring for her grandmother, who was typically inconsolable, inventing matters of dialog and small actions to distract her.
In quieter moments, Buchkouska broke down into tears however tried to remind herself to not “overthink issues”. This was struggle, she thought, and it could do her no good to wallow in grief.
The human toll
At Lychakiv Cemetery within the western metropolis of Lviv, the place Buchkouska’s father is buried, the surge in deaths in early 2022 pressured authorities to allocate further area past the cemetery’s partitions – an space that’s now itself working out of room.
Precise figures for a way many individuals have been killed within the Russia-Ukraine struggle are tough to confirm. The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) confirmed that conflict-related violence killed 2,514 civilians and injured 12,142 others within the nation in 2025 alone.
In keeping with a report by the Middle for Strategic and Worldwide Research, a Washington, DC-based suppose tank, almost two million Ukrainian and Russian troopers are estimated to have been killed, wounded, or gone lacking because the begin of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Russia alone is estimated to have suffered virtually 1.2 million casualties, together with at the least 325,000 deaths.
The report says Russia’s losses exceed these endured by any main energy since World Struggle II, whereas Ukraine’s navy casualties are estimated at between 500,000 and 600,000.
Al Jazeera is unable to confirm the figures independently.
‘All people who lives in Ukraine has some psychological well being concern’
For a lot of Ukrainians, loss is coupled with a way of tension about what comes subsequent.
“Nobody can predict how we’ll reside after the struggle,” Kseniia Voznitsyna, a neurologist and founding father of the primary psychological well being rehabilitation centre for veterans in Ukraine, instructed Al Jazeera.
The human toll is already seen.
“Many individuals have been killed, many individuals reside with amputations and psychological trauma,” Voznitsyna mentioned.
“How the economic system will maintain up” stays unsure, she mentioned. “Whether or not individuals can have jobs with respectable pay – these are open questions.”
For Oleksandra Matviichuk of the Middle for Civil Liberties, a Kyiv-based human rights group and Nobel Peace Prize winner, the psychological weight of struggle is felt most sharply in on a regular basis life.
“Dwelling throughout a struggle means dwelling in full uncertainty,” Matviichuk mentioned, including, “We can’t plan not solely our day, but in addition the following few hours.”
The fixed worry for family members has develop into a defining characteristic of each day existence.
“There isn’t any secure place in Ukraine the place you may disguise from Russian missiles,” mentioned Matviichuk.
In late 2025, the UN Ladies’s consultant in Ukraine, Sabine Freizer Gune, mentioned “just about all people” within the nation “has some psychological well being concern”.
Individuals, particularly in japanese Ukraine or massive cities corresponding to Kyiv, Kharkiv within the northeast, or Odesa within the south, are repeatedly woken as much as mass strikes by Russia.
In winter months, Russian forces typically goal infrastructure, leaving thousands and thousands with out electrical energy, warmth or a dependable water provide.
As Buchkouska stood at her father’s grave, her phrases have been stoic, however her eyes had the faint signal of tears.
If the struggle ends, “we’ll all be completely satisfied”, she mentioned matter-of-factly, “however we can’t do something in regards to the individuals who died, we can’t make them come again to life”.
She pointed to a resilience solid below stress.
“Trauma doesn’t outline us,” she mentioned.“We’re outlined by how we overcome trauma, how we struggle in these circumstances, how we help one another. Now, greater than ever, we really feel acutely what it means to be human.”
