Beyond the catastrophic economic price Ukraine has been forced to pay, the war in Donbas has taken a terrible toll on the lives of millions of ordinary Ukrainians. Nothing but a lasting peace and reintegration can turn this situation around.

33-year old Ildar Dadin is a former security guard who got married in a Moscow detention centre last February. Cameras were not allowed for the short ceremony but journalist Anastasiya Zotova, now his wife, came out smiling to the well-wishers and reporters waiting in the snow. At that point, Dadin had been under house arrest or behind bars for a year, having neither had any previous convictions nor a particularly high pubic profile. The judge at Moscow’s Basmanny Court had sentenced Dadin to a total of three years of prison.