PSCRP-BESA Reports No 182 (February 15, 2026)
In March 2022, when endless streams of refugees were moving westward out of Ukraine, I crossed the border from Hungary into Ukraine. It was my first trip to the country since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion. In the nearly four years that have passed since then, I have visited Ukraine a dozen times, traveling to Kyiv and the Kyiv region, to towns and villages in Zakarpattia, and to Lviv. Since planes do not currently fly to Ukraine, I traveled there and back by train, bus, and taxi — through Poland, Hungary, and Moldova. The last time I visited Kyiv, arriving via Chișinău and Odesa, was in November 2025. In addition to traveling directly to Ukraine, as an emissary of the Jewish Agency I worked with refugees from Ukraine who arrived in Moldova and Poland in 2022. I have had occasion to speak with many Ukrainian citizens in a wide range of settings — from university lecture halls to markets and commuter trains. Because of this, and because I continuously follow Ukrainian media, although I am neither a citizen nor a resident of Ukraine, I can to a certain extent claim the role of an expert regarding the changes that have taken place in Ukrainian society over nearly four years of full-scale war — already the largest armed conflict in Europe since the Second World War.
In November 2024, I outlined some of my observations in the article “Ukraine at War: Sociological and Political Considerations”. In it, I focused primarily on the impact of the full-scale war on ethno-linguistic processes in Ukraine. Since then, I have visited the country several more times.
After my most recent trips to Ukraine — to some extent influenced by what we ourselves have been going through in Israel — I became especially acutely aware of the extent to which Ukrainian society as a whole, particularly its core — those who did not emigrate but remain in the country — is in a state of post-trauma. I would even use the literal translation of the Hebrew term “helem krav” — “combat shock.” Since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, I have not visited Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kryvyi Rih, Kherson, Kramatorsk, or other Ukrainian cities located close to the front line and subjected almost literally to continuous attacks by Russian missiles, UAVs, and at times even tube artillery. However, even the situation in rear-line Kyiv remains tense in terms of shelling. And the destruction by Russia of the central heating system of the Ukrainian capital in the winter of 2025–2026 will undoubtedly have long-term consequences.
As a result of the deliberate destruction by missile strikes of the power plants and municipal facilities servicing the city, central heating pipes froze and burst in a number of places, making rapid restoration virtually impossible. There is no doubt that the destruction of civilian infrastructure was the objective of the Russian military. It is enough to look at the triumphant headlines that appeared in Russian media on January 17: “Klitschko (Mayor of Kyiv – V.C.) Urged Kyiv Residents to Leave the City Due to the Energy Crisis”, “Klitschko Urged Kyiv Residents to Leave the City Amid Energy Crisis”, “For the First Time in History Most of Kyiv Left Without Heat: Klitschko Urged Residents to Leave”, and so on.
But the issue is not limited to shelling and frequent power outages. The war occupies, in one way or another, the entire informational space of Ukraine: news from the front, acquaintances and relatives serving there, internally displaced persons from occupied and frontline territories, and so on. It is impossible to hide from a war of this magnitude. It reminds people of itself not only through air-raid sirens and explosions, but also through seemingly harmless phenomena — such as the fact that in Lviv or Mukachevo one can now more often hear Russian speech (with a characteristic Ukrainian accent) due to the arrival of numerous displaced persons from Eastern Ukraine. And since no end to the war is in sight, Ukrainian society has, in a certain way, adapted to life against the backdrop of war. Moreover, to life against the backdrop of a war with no visible end.
Under these circumstances, for many Ukrainians Israel serves as a model of a democratic state that has existed for many years under conditions of constant military tension, often escalating into large-scale armed conflicts. Israel has shown the world that even under such extreme conditions it is possible to achieve economic success and maintain a relatively high standard and quality of life. For Ukrainian attitudes toward Israel, it is also significant that for many generations Jews were, and still are, an integral part of Ukraine’s history. Israel is not some distant and exotic country like Taiwan, which is also quite successful despite constant military threats and boycott. Israel is populated by Jews who are quite familiar to Ukrainians, many of whom speak Russian or even Ukrainian. Yes, within the Ukrainian information space one can hear as a military commentator the openly antisemitic Roman Svitan; in Ukraine there are streets named after Symon Petliura, whose soldiers carried out Jewish pogroms, and after members of the OUN who collaborated with the Nazis. However, I can testify that walking through Ukrainian cities wearing a kippah today, one is far less likely to encounter manifestations of antisemitism than in Polish cities, not to mention Germany.
The idea of a shared fate between Ukrainians and Jews finds reflection in Ukrainian media. To some extent, this is also facilitated by the activities of the Embassy of the State of Israel in Kyiv, headed by a native of the USSR, Michael Brodsky. It is indicative that in an interview with the Ukrainian information outlet “24 Channel” he stated, among other things: “There are many Jews fighting in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and there are Ukrainians in the IDF.” The Ukrainian publication emphasized in its commentary that “many ethnic Jews serve in the Ukrainian army, including Israeli citizens; the Israeli embassy provides support to families, particularly in tragic moments.”.
For their part, Russian propaganda resources use the participation of Jews in the Russian-Ukrainian war within the ranks of the Ukrainian armed forces to promote antisemitism. Illustrative in this regard is the headline “Jews from Nazi Battalions of the AFU Received Gifts for the Holiday of Purim,” under which the Russian website “Dzen” reported that “about one thousand Purim gifts were delivered to Jewish Ukrainian soldiers fighting on the front lines of the war against Russia, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine (FJCU) reported.” Such wording by ostensibly independent Russian media fully coincides, for example, with the official statement by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a “pure Nazi” and a “traitor to the Jewish people.”
Another factor bringing Ukraine and Israel closer is the awareness among a significant portion of Ukrainians that both states serve as shields of Western civilization, restraining a numerically superior and extremely aggressive enemy. Ukrainian society is also aware that many high-ranking representatives of Western civilization are inclined either to ignore the war imposed on Ukraine and Israel or cynically to use it for their own interests, while rhetorically rejecting it. From my own perspective: more so in the case of Israel and less so in the case of Ukraine.
In any case, one consequence of this largely unique geopolitical role is the well-understood fact within Ukrainian society that today no European state possesses an army as powerful, battle-tested, and motivated as Ukraine’s. The construction and functioning of this military machine has been made possible to a significant extent by enormous financial, military-technical, and logistical assistance from Ukraine’s Western partners; however, Ukraine has paid and continues to pay for it in blood.
It can be stated that four years after the beginning of the full-scale war, Ukrainian society is tired of it. Yet since there are no real or even minimally acceptable prospects for its conclusion, it — having no other option — demonstrates a collective readiness to continue the war. Social post-trauma manifests itself, among other things, in a sense of embitterment toward Russians (including relatives and former friends living in Russia) and in a semi-subconscious desire at any cost to achieve Russia’s defeat — a heavy and humiliating defeat. A verbal expression of this condition has been the emergence of memes meaningful precisely “here and now.” One such meme is the expression “a good Russian,” applied to Russian opposition figures and implying that, from the Ukrainian perspective, there is no essential difference between them and open supporters of Russian aggression — why this is so is a subject for a separate article. Not merely mockery but literal hatred and contempt for Russia permeate the now firmly established meme “bavovna” (which in Ukrainian literally means “cotton”), arising from the phonetic similarity between the Russian word “khlOpok” (cotton) and “khlopOk,” a term often used by official Russian media to euphemistically replace the word “explosion” when reporting strikes by the AFU and SBU on Russian rear areas — usually military, industrial, and transportation facilities. Another popular Ukrainian meme applied to Russians is “went to a concert with Kobzon” (the late famous Soviet and Russian singer of Jewish origin who publicly supported Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014). The list of such memes could be continued.
At the same time, even a relatively superficial acquaintance with the situation allows one to assert that within Ukrainian society there is an increasingly deepening divergence in worldview among its various segments, depending on their place in the protracted armed conflict with Russia. The first group includes those serving in military or civilian capacities at the front and in frontline areas; volunteers who regularly travel to frontline zones with various humanitarian missions; and their family members.
The second group consists of residents of the Ukrainian “rear” not directly connected to events at the front. Of course, one cannot compare the complexity of situations in cities located relatively close to the line of contact — such as Kharkiv or Kryvyi Rih — with life in cities far from the front, such as Lviv or Chernivtsi. However, periodic Russian attacks on western regions of Ukraine bordering EU countries partially blur this distinction. In an entirely different position are the numerous Ukrainian refugees — including men of conscription age — currently residing outside Ukraine.
Finally, there are Ukrainian citizens who found themselves in territories occupied by Russia and who are, for the most part, compelled to cooperate in one way or another with the occupation authorities — from accepting the Russian citizenship imposed upon them to serving in the Russian Army. Sooner or later, this seemingly endless war will end, and one can state with a high degree of confidence that the reunification of representatives of these groups will not be simple; in some cases, it may prove impossible — both at the national level and within individual families.