SHCHASTYA, Ukraine — Nastya meets me holding her three-month-old son in a town called Happiness near the frontline. Just over a checkpoint to the south is Nastya’s hometown, Luhansk, now the capital of the so-called “Luhansk People’s Republic” created by Russia-supported separatists in the spring of 2014. Happiness (Shchastya in Ukrainian) used to be a part of the city.
I was here exactly seven years ago, right before the signing of the Minsk Accords, the U.N.-backed agreement that was supposed to — but did not — end the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The area was under siege then. It took hours to drive there and soldiers did not allow us to step out of our military convoy. “Back then, we woke up guessing: What has been destroyed tonight? Heating, electricity, gas?” Nastya recalls. (Rolling Stone is only using her first name for her safety.) The heavy shelling has…
