Daily Life in Ukraine in the Face of War

My friends and acquaintances went to great pains to keep their cool in the weeks leading up to Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, as Russian forces took up positions along the Ukrainian border. At pubs and restaurants across the city, as well as in endless talks at people's houses, I heard significantly less fear about the likelihood of war at pubs and restaurants than I did in Washington, London, Berlin, or Paris. That changed last week, with Putin's proclamation that Russia was effectively annexing the Ukrainian provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk. It was no longer possible to practise self-possession. People didn't panic right away—very few packed up and left at that point—but they did start talking in hushed tones about what might happen next, about what the Russian military machine might do.
On the day of the announcement, I boarded an overnight train from Kyiv to eastern Ukraine, near to the "line of contact" in the Donbass conflict. The train was nearly empty, and the shelling had escalated drastically. As I travelled from city to city, town to town towards the east, I noticed that the capital's effortful calm had been replaced by something different. Anxiety and weariness have a different quality here. People have been living with a Russian-backed attack for eight years in towns like Stanytsia Luhanska, Hirske, and Popasna, which were all captured by pro-Russian rebels in 2014 and subsequently wrested back.
They've tried to maintain some sort of normalcy amidst the routine savagery. They've seen war as something terrible and gruelling to be managed and survived, rather than a grand clash of civilizations. Any semblance of normalcy has been ripped away as the Russian military unleashes the full force of its weaponry across the country.