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Ukraine: The Shortest Goodbye

Nicole Tung

2024 became another devastating year in the war in Ukraine. Russian forces have made their swiftest advances in more than two years, pushing deeper into the east and seizing more ground than at any time since the full scale invasion began. From the key thermal power plant near the town of Kurakhove to the strategic bastion of Pokrovsk, losses have mounted. Village after village is reduced to broken homes and empty streets, each one another place erased in the minds of soldiers who once called it home.

On the front line, Ukrainian units fight to hold every square metre of their land, yet they do so with weapons that are too few and too weak to drive Russian forces back. Ukraine's incursion into Russia's Kursk region over the summer is now seen by many as a turning point, one that arguably helped trigger a chain of defeats in the months that followed. In 2024 alone, Russian troops have captured nearly four thousand square kilometres of Ukrainian territory, more than seven times the area taken the previous year.

Families flee with almost no warning, packing what they can into cars and buses as shells land ever closer. Soldiers shift positions every few days, forced into retreat by relentless bombardment, leaving behind hastily scribbled farewells on walls and gateposts. The goodbyes are brief, the grief postponed.

What remains is a landscape of absence, where the fight to hold on to a country is measured in metres lost and memories carried away.