Like most of his compatriots, Professor Yaroslav Hrytsak has been on an emotional rollercoaster since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“At times you feel everything is lost. You are heading into the abyss, and then suddenly victory seems very close. We go up and down with the news, especially since [Donald] Trump came to power, because Trump sows chaos.”

Hrytsak teaches history at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv and is one of the most prominent historians still working in Ukraine. Stoicism and cynical optimism are the best attitudes to help one carry on, he says. “Just imagine. Next month this war will have lasted as long as the first World War.”

Paradoxically, Hrytsak says, the empathy and solidarity of the early days of the war made it a high point. “This feeling has died out, because the war has gone on so long.”

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Hrytsak learned last December that his godson Arsan (33) had been killed in Pokrovsk on the eastern front. “He........

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