War may be hell, but it is also fascinating. I met some extraordinary people last week during my third visit to Ukraine since Vladimir Putin launched his war of aggression and conquest in February 2022.
There were medics who no longer treat bullet wounds because drones are supplanting rifles on the battlefield. There was the cheerful Georgian volunteer who has been fighting the Russians on and off since he ran away from home to join his father in combat at age 14. There were the elderly volunteers busily weaving camouflage nets in an Odesa community center. There were drone operators in their 20s, turning skills honed on videogames to the business of killing enemy soldiers and blasting Russian tanks. There were mothers and grandmothers in Lviv watering the flowers on fresh graves in a swiftly expanding military cemetery.