What awaits Ukraine when the fighting stops?

From Arras to Mostar, war has left its footprints all over Europe. Some cities rise from the ashes but Mary Dejevsky fears the legacy for Ukraine will be an intense hatred for the bully next door – a hatred that will destabilise the whole region for years to come

It will take decades to rebuild Ukraine’s cities (AFP/Getty)

As the latest – perhaps the last – evacuees from the ruins of Mariupol cross into the relative safety of Ukrainian-held Zaporizhia, there is distress, relief and resilience in almost equal measure. Some of the new arrivals have the energy to raise their arms in triumph and shout Slava Ukraini (Glory to Ukraine). Most are quiet. A few, overcome with emotion, speak in the barest detail of the hell they have left behind.

They told of weeks spent in darkness in the maze of bunkers underneath the vast Azovstal steelworks, of the mortal risks of venturing above ground even for a few minutes towards the light and the air. And they told of friends and family members gone forever, their lives – long or short – cut off seemingly at random. And when you heard these spare and matter-of-fact accounts, you could only marvel at the speakers’ calm acceptance of what had happened, and the sense of something like gratitude for just being alive.

The worst, probably, they didn’t tell and maybe never will. Among the more extraordinary features of war is the way, once the horrors are over, so many people seem able to pick up their lives and carry on, never mentioning what barbarism and deprivation they have been through.