Kyiv, Ukraine – Snizhana Petradkhina, a 34-year-old florist, pulled her hands from her thick puffer jacket to reveal two thermal hand warmers.“These are saving me today,” she said, standing beneath a flickering portable lamp in her stall in an underpass leading to a Kyiv metro station. “I am tired of feeling cold, and I am tired of no light. But all of Ukraine is tired of war. We want our children to have quiet nights – no drones, no explosions.”Russia has repeatedly attacked Ukraine’s energy infrastructure this winter, causing mass power cuts in the Ukrainian capital, during a bitter cold snap that has left many residents without electricity and running water.But war fatigue had long set in. Ukrainians barely react to the multiple air-raid sirens that ring out every day.The conflict that began at breakneck speed almost four years ago, gripping the world’s attention, has gradually ground down into a brutal war of attrition.And while Ukrainian, Russian, United States and Emirati officials struck positive tones after talks on Friday and Saturday in Abu Dhabi, saying they marked a first step towards peace, there was a large measure of scepticism on the ground.“I don’t think the war ends tomorrow,” Igor Novikov, a former adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said from his trendy office overlooking Kyiv’s skyline. “Any conversation to end the war is better than silence, [but I am not] optimistic in the short term.”The war can only end under two circumstances, he said. Either “Russia, as the aggressor, decides it wants t …
