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Zakarpattia: Wartime in Ukraine’s most ‘peaceful’ region [1]

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Date: 2023-05

The pink blossoms of sakura trees hang peacefully in Mukachevo, a town of 85,500 in western Ukraine’s Zakarpattia region. No sirens, gunfire, distant artillery or the motorbike growl of Iranian drones disturb the blooms under the gentle sun – only the humming of insects.

It’s an unusual scene in Ukraine, 14 months on from Russia’s full-scale invasion.

On 3 May alone, Russia shelled the southern Kherson region 98 times, killing 23 people in a single attack on a city supermarket. And on the night of 4 May, Russia attacked Ukraine with 24 drones against a background of offensive operations in the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions.

Zakarpattia is the region furthest from both Russia and Belarus, and life here, hundreds of miles from the front lines, is as close to normal as one can get in a country facing its second year of war.

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President Volodymyr Zelenskyi has claimed that people in relatively safe regions such as this are losing motivation in Ukraine’s war effort. Comparing the situation now to the “stronger spirit” at the beginning of the Russian invasion, he said: “Now I see in some cities that they are on vacation. I believe that this is a weakness.”

But though life in Zakarpattia may feel like a ‘vacation’ at times, the border region is still touched by war. Thousands of ‘internally displaced persons’ (IDPs) from the south and east have come here, while the region has faced economic decline, emigration and an exodus of its ethnic Hungarian minority population.

Zakarpattia’s border with the EU has become a crossing point for refugees fleeing Russia’s destruction, as well as a clandestine route for men avoiding conscription into the Ukrainian military. And the region, like other parts of Ukraine, sees a steady stream of bodies – fallen soldiers being returned home for burial.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/zakarpattia-ukraine-russia-war-front-line-idps-conscription-hungary/

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