President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine set a sombre tone on Monday for the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion, posting a short video praising Ukrainians for their sacrifices and honouring those who died.

No major events were planned. It was a day to remember what was lost: loved ones and previous lives.

On her way to work at a local supermarket, Olha Shtepan, a Ukrainian refugee in Hamburg, Germany, started crying. “It’s a wound that doesn’t heal,” she said of the invasion that began on February 24, 2022. “Sometimes, I manage to not think of all what has happened, but on a day like today it is terrible.”

Three years ago when Russia attacked, Shtepan was babysitting for her sister’s children in Kyiv. Her own children were with her husband in Irpin, a nearby suburb that was partly occupied by Russia in the first weeks of the war. She grabbed the children and rushed to Irpin to join her family — into greater danger. “At that time, I did not know that we are going to hell,” she said by voice message from Germany.

After more than a week of heavy bombing, they evacuated with four children in a flow of people fleeing over the remnants a blown-up bridge. “We were there,” she said of the bridge, which became a symbol of the suffering in the early part of the war.

The family left for Germany, but the pain remains. “The whole month of February for us, all Ukrainians who went through those horrors, it’s a terrible month,” Shtepan said.

Across Ukraine, there are memorials. Some, like destroyed cars of those who tried to flee that litter the countryside, remain as they did back then, a reminder of what was lost. Others are newly created, as the war continues.

Ukraine Wow, a public organisation that promotes Ukrainian culture, earlier this month created an animated sculpture of 3-metre-high hearts at the central railway station in Kyiv. The hearts beat faster each time they receive a message from people with the name of someone who has died in a war.

New York Times News Service