International Crisis Group

As great powers debate Russia’s place in the world, its role in eastern Ukraine’s 2-½-year-old war, and the Minsk peace process to end it, ordinary people living along the front line  in eastern Ukraine are just as worried about many of the local leaders’ Soviet-style habits of governance, corruption and patronage.

‘Babushki’ women singing Slavic songs gather at a communal pergola in Schastia, eastern Ukraine, a few meters away from a crater created during artillery fighting last August. 

Image Source: CRISIS GROUP/Magdalena Grono

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