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When grief becomes routine

After the start of the full-scale invasion, I began recording the first stories of those affected by the war. Every conversation struck me. The pain of others, which I had to let pass through me, was so exhausting that I still do not remember what happened to me in those months. Over the course of three years, I wrote down more than 200 stories. I remember each of them. They are a huge part of my consciousness.

December 8, 2025 - Polina Vernyhor - AnalysisIssue 6 2025Magazine

Orikhiv courtyard abandoned by residents and destroyed by Russian shells. Zaporizhia region. February 2024. Photo: Polina Vernyhor

“Why was a day of mourning declared throughout Ukraine for those killed in Kryvyi Rih? After all, there are no days of mourning for those killed in Kharkiv, Kupyansk, Kramatorsk,” said a girl with beautiful black hair, sipping tea in the kitchen of her Kyiv apartment. We were meeting for the first time. My former partner Vanya, who had been mobilized six months earlier, got away to Kyiv for a few days and decided to gather friends for a Sunday lunch.

The day before, on April 4th, Russia struck a residential area in Kryvyi Rih, killing 19 people, nine of whom were children. This is a terrible case that once again cuts the ground out from under the feet of many Ukrainians – those who have not yet completely exhausted their reserves of empathy. To me, the very concept of a “day of mourning” looks like something from pre-war life, when people died from a gas explosion in a residential building or a major road accident. Now it seems that all of life has turned into a continuous day of mourning, in which the boundaries of each individual tragedy, each lost life, destroyed home, or broken psyche have long been blurred and smeared.

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