On Valentine’s Day 2021, three Ukrainian soldiers died from an exploding landmine in the Donbas, the region of eastern Ukraine split by fighting between the Ukrainian government and Russian-backed rebel forces. The youngest was born in 1994, three years after Ukraine became an independent state following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The year he was born, Ukraine agreed to get rid of all the nuclear weapons on its soil. When he was three, Russia and Ukraine signed a Friendship Treaty, affirming respect for each other’s territorial integrity. Indeed, he grew up in a state whose territory was not plagued by armed disputes over unresolved legacies from Soviet and pre-Soviet times. Moldova and Georgia were not so lucky. Ukraine was a relative success story.
Russia's War Against Ukraine
Global Voices: Capturing the mood on both sides of the Ukraine-Russia conflict in Donbas
A Ukrainian border guard checks the temperature of a boy crossing the border at the checkpoint in the town of Schastya in Lugansk region on Nov. 10, 2020.
