As Ukraine goes through the fifth year of full-scale war, a quiet but unmistakable movement is underway. Families are packing what they can, often saying goodbye to aging parents and family dogs, and leaving for safer ground—whether to western Ukrainian cities or across borders into Europe. They are not abandoning their country in spirit. Yet the decision to go is driven by exhaustion that no slogan of resilience can erase. This outflow, accelerating ahead of what officials themselves warn will be the harshest winter yet, sits uneasily alongside the official narrative of unbroken national will. So does the daily reality in the frontline regions that rarely dominate the international briefing notes.

In Kherson, once a city of nearly 300,000, the population has fallen below 60,000 since 2022. Residents post videos of emptied streets as if in a grim flash mob. “Kherson is losing the most valuable thing it has—its people. Some leave, some survive, and some have already become history,” volunteer Anton Vlad captured the mood while documenting the departure of yet another family heading to Central Vinnytsia. “Conditions are getting worse and worse in Kherson,” he explains.

Similar stories surface elsewhere. One couple and their young son, Mark, finally left this summer after years of shelling, sirens, blackouts and fear. The child’s bed-wetting, nervous tics and nail-biting tipped the balance. The parents plan to move between countries so the father can keep working, the mother can continue online consultations, and Mark can start school in Italy in September. Grandparents, the family house and the aging dog remain behind. Who will blame them? Unbreakable and resistant have become empty words while ordinary people simply want to live the lives they once had.

Even the capital feels the strain. For the fourth consecutive year Kyiv ranks among the world’s ten least liveable cities. What, then, of the nine frontline regions that Russia has turned into something far worse?

Men of fighting age continue to risk illegal crossings. Border and emergency services long ago stopped publicly counting bodies recovered from the Tysa River that men are trying to cross hoping to escape to Romania or Hungary; the tally had grown too dark. Others share accounts of routes through the western mountains toward the EU. No one will ever know the precise number. Forced mobilization—leading either to the front or to bribery—has drained motivation to fight and stay in the country. Conservative estimates put the annual cost of corruption linked to draft avoidance above five billion dollars. Last year Czechia received more Ukrainian men of working age than women; the number of such men in the country rose by more than 21,000.

Depopulation remains one of the quieter subjects of wartime discourse, as does the scale of physical destruction. Last year, Ukraine’s official numbers registered around 600,000 of those who either died or left the country. The real numbers might be much higher. Roughly 20% of Ukrainian territory is under Russian control; another 10% endures near-constant shelling. In the active combat zones the intensity of drone, missile, artillery and guided-bomb strikes is difficult for distant observers to grasp. Daily existence becomes survival under weapons that Ukrainian air defences frequently cannot intercept. Total poverty keeps many residents in place; corruption adds a further layer of indignity. Knowledge of these conditions produces a quiet rejection of the status quo in which life itself is eroded by multiple means.

Kyiv top of the list

Ukrainian authorities mention the long stretch of territory along the Russian and partially Belarusian borders far less often than they speak of Kyiv after each major strike. Acting Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha’s posts illustrate the pattern. After one heavy night he wrote: “A hell of a night in Kyiv. At least 9 people were killed and 23 injured as a result of Russia’s barbaric attack with three dozen ballistic missiles.”

Keyword and semantic reviews of his public statements from January through early August 2026 show far more frequent and detailed references to attacks on the capital than to those on Odesa, Kherson or Sumy. The disparity is consistent with the higher diplomatic signal value of strikes on Kyiv. It does not erase the fact that frontline regions often suffer more continuous and severe cumulative damage.

People from Kherson, Sumy and Odesa keep asking why their suffering receives less attention. MP Oleksii Goncharenko, who has repeatedly pressed the authorities over the silencing of attacks on Odesa that continued after the start of the much-publicized 40-day special operation, wrote: “Sometimes it seems we live in some parallel reality. Right now, the Black Sea ports are effectively blocked. Odesa is under constant Russian attacks. Civilian vessels are under fire from missiles and drones. Zaporizhzhia, Pavlohrad and other cities suffer daily from KABs and missiles.” He notes that the authorities distribute posts and advise citizens to think about their own safety.

Winter is coming

The phrase “this winter will be the harshest” has already become a bitter meme. It prompts questions about what concrete help the government will provide to the people.

The 40-day special operation targeting Russian oil refineries, tankers and warehouses was heavily promoted. Its results on the battlefield proved limited. Russian forces continued to advance, gaining more ground during the operation than they had in May. The response intensified: nearly 400 civilians killed and more than 2,100 wounded in July alone—record figures since 2022. Russia keeps destroying fuel stations, Odesa ports halted after strikes on shipping, and attacks on postal and logistics facilities increased. Mandatory evacuation zones keep expanding—Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk, Sloviansk, Dobropillia, northern outskirts of Kharkiv, Sumy, and now additional villages in Dnipropetrovsk region. Evacuation often lags behind the approaching front; families are left to act on their own initiative.

Dearth of ammo

In search of a visible solution, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has widely advertised the prospect of 300 Patriot missiles from the United States. The number is impressive; the practical protection it can offer is narrower. Missiles of this type are concentrated on the capital and a handful of critical sites. Some frontline cities receive the equivalent of one Patriot interceptor a month—nowhere near enough.

Three hundred missiles spread across three winter months and 23 regions under Ukrainian control cannot shield hundreds of thousands, if not millions of civilians. They cannot stop the aerial guided bombs that Russia has intensified from Sumy in the north to Kherson in the south.

After four and a half years, Ukraine still lacks a comprehensive protective system of the kind Israel has long maintained: layered air defence, reliable shelters (more than 90% of existing ones currently fail basic standards), early warning, and economic measures that allow ordinary people to prepare for winter. The conversation about 300 Patriots sometimes appears less a solution than a means of shifting responsibility for the absence of protection onto Western partners.

Officials and politicians offer striking figures and statements of continued need. Ordinary people, meanwhile, joke online that every night they simply draw their “anti-drone curtains” and close their “anti-missile windows.” Survival, they suggest, still depends more on luck and private effort than on any systematic state shield. Ukraine does need improved air defence and additional missiles. Yet missiles alone will never be sufficient for a country of this size and geography. After nearly five years of large-scale war, the deeper requirement is a working architecture of protection—shelters that function, interception of drones and guided bombs, jets capable of contesting the air, safeguarded infrastructure, and an economy that leaves citizens able to help themselves. Developing domestic production of certain systems rather than remaining permanently dependent on external supplies could form part of that architecture. But this will demand resources that Ukraine does not have: time, capacities and even more money.

The resilience narrative has served an important diplomatic purpose: it has helped secure international support by projecting determination. The quiet departure of families before another winter, the emptying of cities like Kherson, Sumy or Sloviansk, the taboo surrounding depopulation, and the relative silence about the continuous hell of the frontline regions all complicate that narrative. They do not diminish the courage of those who remain or the legitimacy of Ukraine’s right to defend itself. They simply record that people are people, that exhaustion accumulates, and that protection of the civilian population remains incomplete – thus, perhaps, it will never be. Acknowledging these realities is not convenient for any propaganda machine. It is, however, necessary if the next phase of this war is to be met with something more durable than slogans and selective attention.

Discussions about the war in Ukraine in the West often boil down to tactical, short-term decisions that amount to unsystematic actions which frequently lag behind the challenges. The price of this approach is a country that looks increasingly devastated and unattractive both for living and for investment. The problem is that all these decisions are half-measures that do not aim to change the status quo—that is, to stop the war. They resemble a boat in which holes are patched while new ones keep appearing. No amount of resources or public patience will be enough to sustain such a large country indefinitely for decades. The only way forward for Ukraine, if it wants a future as a prosperous country, is to end the war.

Iuliia Mendel is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s former press secretary (2019-2021), journalist. She is on X at @IuliiaMendel