In 2025, Ukraine recorded the highest number of civilian casualties since the first year of Russia’s full-scale invasion. According to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, the number of civilians killed and wounded in 2025 was 31% higher than in 2024 and 70% higher than in 2023. This is not a statistical anomaly. It is the result of a deliberate method of warfare.

Over the last week I have been approached by Ukrainians and diplomats living in Kyiv who say thank you to Prime Minister Mark Carney for his important and historic speech at the World Economic Summit in Davos.

Nearly four years of emigration have become a reality for millions of Ukrainian families. Many left with children of different ages in haste, without a clear understanding of how long this “temporary” situation would last. For some children, school life began abroad — the first day at school, first friends, first notebooks in another language. This experience inevitably shapes a new identity, and in many cases children begin to speak a foreign language more confidently than their native one.

A notable and telling trend has emerged inside the Russian military: rare, highly trained specialists are being reassigned en masse to frontline infantry roles, Viktor Kevliuk, Ukrainian Colonel and expert in Defense Strategies, wrote on Jan. 28.

As a foreigner, what impresses me most is the motivation and determination of Ukrainians in defending their country — not only the military, who fight for their homeland day and night, but also civilians and entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurial spirit of Ukrainians is equally impressive.

“We go out to the fields in body armour,” says Yuriy Bolotov, “We don’t carry arms, but we also defend our country’s interests when fighting for our harvest in the Kherson steppes.”