While children play in Kyiv’s parks, the war casts long shadows – on the mothers who wait, the fathers who vanish, and a future no one can quite name.

On a playground in Kyiv, children laugh and run, oblivious to the war raging only 200 miles away from the city.

I am usually the only man there. The fathers are either working, serving at the front, or staying off the streets to avoid being stopped and handed mobilisation papers. The mothers watch the children and speak quietly about everyday things – household chores, schools, food prices.

Almost all of them speak Ukrainian, and so do their little ones.

Continue reading Playground questions: the hidden costs of Ukraine’s war at Estonian World.