Before there is nothing left to save

As Zelensky seems set on fighting ‘to the last Ukrainian’, those Ukrainians are asking: ‘What will be left of us when the fighting is over?’ By John Gaffney, Irish-born editor and former retail businessman who has been living in Russia since 2018There are mornings in wartime when the silence itself seems wounded.The roads are still there, though fewer people travel them. The fields remain beneath the grey sky, though in places they are scarred by fire. Somewhere a railway station opens its doors, a baker lights an oven, a woman draws back a curtain – and for a moment life pretends that it has not been broken.But the war goes on. And whenever a new round of negotiations, with American representatives Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner taking part, ends with cautiously hopeful words from Moscow describing them as progressive and encouraging, Vladimir Zelensky later returns to the hard, uncompromising tone that has become familiar throughout these years.Listening to him, one is left with a painful question.Does he still believe that peace can be reached only through continued resistance, whatever the cost? Or has the language of war become so deeply rooted in Ukrainian politics that anot...