Near the shimmering Ternopil’s’kyi Pond, 17-year-old Liubov Tymura said she took a morning walk with her friend and talked about their classes, especially how glad they were to skip statistics.
It sounds just like an ordinary day for an average teenager anywhere in the world, except Tymura lives in Ukraine. During her first class on Tuesday, she evacuated the building along with her peers due to a bomb threat. The class responded not with panic, but by gathering at nearby cafes and making small talks. Tymura said of the event, “It happens fairly often, and it’s strange how normal it feels.”
The three years of war not only destroyed cities and towns, it also shattered senses of normalcy for a generation of youths across the country.
On November 25th, 2024, Tymura was in Ternopil taking her final exams when Russia launched a massive strike. Tymara said she saw flashes and heard loud blasts in her city, “and you can imagine how exhausted I was, both because of the final itself and because of the attack.”
She said she just wanted to go back to her apartment to “snack under a blanket, have a warm tea, take a shower, and call it a day.” But she couldn’t. The attack left the whole city out of electricity. Back in her apartment, she could only make do with some ready-to-eat meals.
Tymura said the attack could have left residents without electricity for two weeks, so she felt amazed to be sitting at the dinner table with warm food after a hot shower only three days after the attack when electricity was restored.
The constant disruptions mean that going to school or simply trying to live in a war bear little resemblance to the experience of teenagers elsewhere.
As the war enters its fourth year, more than 42,000 civilians have been killed or injured, according to the latest report prepared by multiple NGOs.
Facing unpredictable attacks, schools have adopted more flexible formats of instruction, combining online and in-person classes, as some do not have bomb shelters or are located in regions under heavy bombardment, according to a World Bank report. Holidays and celebrations are also canceled or limited under martial law.
The effect of such a fundamental shift in daily life is evident in how young people like Liubov navigate information.
At the beginning of the war, Liubov was glued to her screens reading everything she could about the conflict. “But now I am trying to simply get as isolated as possible because my mental state isn’t the best when I do read them,” she said.
Unlike her peers in the United States or elsewhere in the world, Tymura could not simply close the tab of a news article and move on to something else. Tymura says she sometimes has issues sleeping. This is not uncommon as the constant uncertainty of the war took an emotional toll on the children. A 2024 UNICEF survey found that Sleep problems affected half of adolescents aged 13 to 15, and one in five in the same age group reported intrusive thoughts and flashbacks, indicators consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder.
To cope with the stress, Liubov said she started to read fiction like “I Who Have Never Known Me Men” and “Four Treasures of the Sky” as a way to escape the brutal atrocities in the news.
Despite the mental distress resulting from the war, Liubov said she remained hopeful that one day things would be back to normal.
“Our people are magical,” she said with a big smile.
“I am profoundly grateful to anyone who’s doing their best to make sure that our people and our country are flourishing,” she said, referring to electricians involved in the repair work after the Christmas attack – the average Ukrainians maintaining basic functions of the society.
