Ukrainians mourn missing homes and loved ones after four years of war

By Margaryta Chornokondratenko

DZENZELIVKA, Ukraine, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Sixty-five-year-old Halyna Popriadukhina has fled her home three times as Russian troops have marched deeper into eastern Ukraine during four years of war. Tired of running, she hopes Ukraine can somehow hold them back.

"I'm afraid there's nowhere else to escape," she said, the exhaustion apparent in her voice as she relates how one of her sons is missing in action, the other likely held by Russian forces.

Popriadukhina is among nearly 4 million people displaced within Ukraine, on top of more than 5 million who fled to Europe, as the war grinds into its fifth year next week. Many of them fear they will not see their homes, or loved ones, again.

Control of her homeland of Donbas - comprised of Ukraine's industrialised eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk - is at the heart of U.S.-backed peace talks to end the war, Europe's biggest conflict since World War Two.

Russia is demanding that Kyiv cede the remaining 20% of Donetsk that it has been unable to conquer - something Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has refused even though he said U.S. mediators had advised him behind closed doors it would be enough to secure peace.

"We can't just withdraw," Zelenskiy said this week. "We have to understand that Donbas is a part of our independence ... It's not about the land. It's not only about territories: it's about people."

RUSSIA INVADED AS SHE WAS MILKING COWS

Popriadukhina said she had been milking cows with a friend when missiles began flying on Feb. 24, 2022 as the Russian invasion began. She reluctantly agreed to flee on her son's urging, leaving behind her home and livestock that had been critical to her survival.

"I tried to make it so that I had everything (in life)," said Popriadukhina, a former collective farmworker.

"I didn't take anything from there. Everything was lost."

After several months in western Ukraine, she returned to the Donetsk region in the summer of 2022 - only to leave again last March as Russian forces pressed forward. When they lurched further westward into the Dnipropetrovsk region, she moved again.

She now lives in central Ukraine, hundreds of kilometres away from her hometown of Vremivka in the east, which is now occupied by Russian troops. Ukrainian authorities allocated her an abandoned, ramshackle house in the village of Dzenzelivka.

Like countless other towns and villages across Ukraine, it features a so-called "Alley of Heroes" with portraits of fallen soldiers. Residents stop by every morning to honour them in a moment of silence.

Popriadukhina's trajectory reflects Russia's grinding advances over the years. It occupies about one-fifth of the country after what Ukraine says have been deeply costly assaults across a battle-scarred steppe that have wiped entire settlements off the map.

"I don't need their little Russia," she said, using a diminutive coined by Ukrainians to show derision for the territorial designs of their much larger neighbour.

While Kyiv's outmanned and outgunned troops have held back any potential breakthrough, the Norwegian Refugee Council has warned that internal refugees are finding it harder to survive as aid dwindles and their savings run out.

"Many families are now forced to live in precarious conditions, often resorting to risky or unsustainable solutions to cope, including reducing their health or heating expenses," it said on Thursday.

Popriadukhina said she had once been offered passage to Poland: "But I said I won't leave my country."

She is haunted by questions over the fate of her two sons.

One was being treated at a hospital in the besieged city of Mariupol when Russian forces swept in. The other enlisted in his son's footsteps, then went missing in 2023.

More than 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians remain missing in Vladimir Putin's war, Kyiv says, in addition to the tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops killed.

"Honestly, if I could, I would tear him apart with my own hands, that Putin," said Popriadukhina. "He brought suffering to so many people."

Sitting in her living room, she recalls a moment earlier in the war when she found a young man outside her home in Vremivka who had been killed by shrapnel. As a mother, it hit her particularly hard.

"Please tell me," she said. "How can you forgive this?"