"It's a terrible war."
This is how Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz summarized the situation in Ukraine on Thursday when he paid a lightning visit to the country this week together with French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi - also to demonstrate solidarity in Kyiv.
Meanwhile, military experts speak of the "most dangerous" and the "decisive" phase of the war.
It remains to be seen what concrete consequences the announced support from the three most important EU countries will have for the Ukrainians.
At least the visit should ease some of the skepticism about the hesitant Germans in the country.
Because up until now, as SPIEGEL correspondent Christian Esch reports, German journalists in Ukraine have faced trouble: "I remember having to justify myself when I was stopped at a roadblock in Kyiv and showed my German passport - and I was then told that the German government was in cahoots with Russia, so to speak.«
more on the subject
Scholz in Kyiv: Everything is the sameThe SPIEGEL editorial by Özlem Topçu
Ukraine news on Thursday: France wants to deliver additional mobile artillery pieces to Ukraine
Kharkiv between war and peace: first life returned, then the shells Christian Esch and Maxim Dondyuk report from Kharkiv (photos)
Ukrainian capital under fire: this is how people in Kyiv prepare for encirclementFrom Kyiv, a report by Christian Esch and Maxim Dondyuk (photos)
Esch was in Ukraine months before the start of the war at the end of February and has been to Ukraine again and again since then, most recently in Kharkiv in the east of the country.
There he got to know a precarious everyday life.
He talks about it in the podcast.
Although the fighting has meanwhile concentrated on the Donbass, it can spread to other parts of the country at any time: "It's not in the interests of the Russians to just conquer any areas, what's important is peaceful life in Ukraine to destroy."
Long-awaited normalcy is a long way off for citizens, even as they do everything they can to make their devastated cities livable—and even beautiful—again.
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But the sheer fear, it just runs very deep.
And unfortunately there is not one moment in which Ukraine could say: Well, it's over, now we're getting started with our peaceful reconstruction, at least here in this region.«
After the beginning of the war, which seemed erratic, the Russian army is now, according to Esch, proceeding systematically, as per the textbook from the war academy:
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The Russian army has visibly failed in the original goals set by Putin, namely to bring about a regime change quickly in bring Kiev and much of Ukraine under control.
But if the aim is to destroy a country, Putin can certainly do that.«
In the current podcast episode, Christian Esch explains what the chances of the Ukrainians are at the front and how the war is increasingly wearing people down away from the front.
Listen to the current episode here: