24 hours in Ukraine: A single day shows the reality of life as war hits 1,000 days

KYIV, Ukraine — The clock on her wall stopped almost as soon as the day began, its hands frozen by the Russian bomb that hit the dormitory serving as home for Ukrainians displaced by war.

It was 1:45 a.m. in an upstairs room in the eastern city of Zaporizhzhia, Natalia Panasenko’s home for just shy of a year after the town she thinks of as her real home came under Russian occupation. The explosion blasted a door on top of her, smashed her refrigerator and television and shredded the flowers she’d just received for her 63rd birthday.

“The house was full of people and flowers. People were congratulating me ... and then there was nothing. Everything was mixed in the rubble,” she said. “I come from a place where the war is going on every day. We only just left there, and it seemed to be quieter here. And the war caught up with us again.”

Nov. 11 was a typical day of violence and resilience in Ukraine. The Associated Press fanned out across Ukraine to chronicle 24 hours of life just as the country prepared to mark a grim milestone Tuesday: 1,000 days since Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.

The day opened with two Russian bombings — one that hit Panasenko’s apartment and another that killed six in Mykolaiv, including a woman and her three children. Before the day was even halfway done, a Russian ballistic missile shattered yet another apartment building, this time in the city of Kryvyi Rih.

Swimmers braved the Black Sea waters off Odesa, steelworkers kept the economy limping along, a baby was born. Soldiers died and were buried. The lucky ones found a measure of healing for their missing limbs and broken faces.

About a fifth of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory is now controlled by Russia. Those invisible geographical lines shift constantly, and the closer a person is to them the more dangerous life is.

In the no-man’s-land between Russian and Ukrainian forces, there’s hardly any life at all. It’s called the Gray Zone for good reason. Ashen homes, charred trees and blackened pits left by shells exploding over 1,000 days of war stretch as far as the eye can see.

Odesa, 6:50 a.m.

The waters of the Black Sea hover around 13 degrees Celsius (55 Fahrenheit) in late fall. The coastline is mined. Dmytro's city is regularly targeted by drones and missiles.

But Dmytro — who insisted on being identified only by his first name because he was worried for the safety of his family — was undaunted as he plunged into the waves with a handful of friends for their regular swim.

Before the war, the group numbered a couple of dozen. Many fled the country. Men were mobilized to fight. Some returned with disabilities that keep them out of the water. His 33-year-old stepson is missing in action after a battle in the Donetsk region.

For Dmytro and fellow swimmers, the ritual grounds them and makes the grimness of war more bearable. He said the risks of his hobby are well worth the reward: “If you’re afraid of wolves, don’t go into the forest.”

Zaporizhzhia, noon

Managing the Zaporizhstal steel mill during wartime means days filled with calculations for Serhii Saphonov.

The staff of 420 is less than half its pre-war levels. Power cuts from Russian attacks on electricity infrastructure require an “algorithm of actions” to maintain operations. Russian forces are closing in on the coke mine in Pokrovsk that supplies the plant with coal. And the city is under increasing attack by Russia’s unstoppable glide bombs.

Right outside his office, a bulletin board displays the names of 92 former steelworkers who have joined the army. Below are photos of the dead. Staff hold fundraisers for supplies for colleagues on the front, including two bulletproof vests sitting in the corner near his desk.

“The old workers, they carry everything on their shoulders. They are hardened. They know their job,” Saphonov said. “Everyone knows that we have to endure, hold out, hoping that things will get better ahead.”

Chernihiv, 1 p.m.

Dr. Vladyslava Friz has performed more reconstructive surgeries in the past 1,000 days than she did in the previous decade of her career. And the injuries are like nothing she had ever seen before.

Her days start early and end late. In the first months of the war, she said, the hospital was admitting 60 people per hour, and eight surgeons worked nonstop. They’re still catching up, because so many of the injured need multiple surgeries.

On Nov. 11, she was rebuilding the cheek and jaw of a patient injured in a mine explosion.

“Appearance is a person’s visual identity,” she said. “There is work to be done; we are doing it. We have no other options. There are medicines, equipment and personnel, but there are no metal structures for reconstruction. There is no state funding for implants.”

She said she will not abandon her patients but worries that the world will abandon Ukraine as the war approaches its fourth year.

“The global community continues to lose interest in the events in Ukraine while we lose people every day,” she said. “The world seems to have forgotten about us.”

Odesa, 6 p.m.

Yulia Ponomarenko has brought two babies into the world in the past 1,000 days, including Mariana on Nov. 11. Her husband, Denys, is fighting at the front.

Their hometown, Oleshky, was submerged by flooding after the explosion of the Kakhovka Dam. But by then, she’d long since fled the occupying Russian forces, who target the families of Ukrainian soldiers.

Mariana, born healthy at 3.8 kilograms and 55 centimeters (8 pounds, 6 ounces and 21 inches), will grow up with an older brother and sister and a menagerie of two cats and two dogs.

“This child is very expected, very wanted. We now have another princess,” Ponomarenko said.

Kyiv, 9 p.m.

The actors can't perform in their home theater in Kharkiv — too many bombs, too few people willing to gather in one place. So they've moved to the Ukrainian capital, where they played to a nearly full house on Nov. 11 as guests of the Franko Theater.

“Because of the war, the Kharkiv theater cannot play on its stage. We play underground. It is literally underground art. There are only two to three places in Kharkiv where we can play, and that's it,” said Mykhailo Tereshchenko, one of the principal actors of the Taras Shevchenko Academic Ukrainian Drama Theatre, named for Ukraine's most famous writer.

Yevhen Nyshchuk, director of the Franko, said the theater paused production for a few months after the war started. Now, it's packed nearly every night there is a play, and the lengthy applause when curtains close is deafening.

The reason goes beyond the quality of a performance at this point, he believes, and expresses “this inner realization that in spite of everything, we will create, we will live, we will come, we will meet, we will applaud each other.”