‘Switch to defence’: Ukraine faces difficult 2024 amid aid, arms setbacks
Al Jazeera
A failed counteroffensive, declining aid and shifting public sentiments are leaving Kyiv less optimistic about the direction of the war in the new year.
Kyiv, Ukraine – Whenever Svitlana Matvienko hears the wailing of air raid sirens, she goes down to the nearby subterranean shopping mall.
There, a barista she’s on a first-name basis with gets her a large latte, and Matvienko clacks away on her tiny silver laptop, sitting next to several dozen others waiting out the air raid.
“I’m like a little Pavlov dog, but the sirens make me drool for coffee,” the 52-year-old freelance marketing expert told Al Jazeera with a sense of self-deprecating humour that helps Ukrainians cope with the war.
The crowd around her is minuscule in comparison with last year, when hundreds of people thronged the same Metrograd mall, often staying for the night with their weeping children and squealing pets.
To Matvienko, the December 15 air raid was yet another multimillion-dollar exercise in the futility of Russia’s war effort, with all the cruise missiles and kamikaze drones shot down and no casualties reported.
