(February 24, 2026 — Four Years Since Russia’s Full-Scale Invasion)
By the fourth year,
you stop asking when it will end.
You learn instead
how long a body can hold heat
after the heart has given up.
How to close a wound
while the artillery keeps speaking.
How to kneel in mud that has known
too many names.
The first year was fire.
The second, disbelief.
The third, exhaustion that tasted like metal.
The fourth—
is bone.
Bone remembering impact.
Bone remembering winter.
Bone remembering who we were
before the sky split open.
Russia sends its steel like weather—
predictable, merciless, seasonal.
We answer with tourniquets,
with hands that no longer tremble,
with promises made quietly
over men and women
who will not see another sunrise.
I have held more dying than birthdays.
I have learned the weight of a helmet
when the head beneath it is gone.
I have pressed my palm
against torn flesh
as if touch alone
could argue with death.
Somewhere far from this trench
they speak of strategy.
Here, we speak names.
Four years.
The invasion grows older.
So do we.
But so does our refusal.
Touching bleeding flesh,
I do not swear in anger anymore.
I swear in certainty.
For every comrade carried out.
For every village that still stands.
For every child who sleeps
because we did not.
Ukraine breathes —
not because the sky is kind,
but because we are.
And today,
as on the first day,
I remain.
