Four years ago, the world gave Ukraine four days.

Four days before Kyiv would fall.Four days before the government would collapse.Four days before the story would dissolve into another tragic headline.

Instead, Ukraine is still standing.

This week marks four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion — a war many predicted would be swift. It has not been swift. It has been grinding. Relentless. Designed to exhaust.

At a recent salon conversation hosted by Action for Post-Soviet Jewry (Action-PSJ), retired Brigadier General Leonid Kondratiuk spoke candidly about Russia’s early miscalculations — particularly the underestimation of Ukrainian resistance. He described a nation adapting in real time to 600 drones launched daily, to blackouts that leave cities with one or two hours of electricity, to water systems and hospitals deliberately targeted.

This war is not only about territory.

It is about attrition.

By striking infrastructure — utilities, schools, medical facilities — Russia wages war not only against the military but against civilian endurance.

And while global headlines focus on the political dynamics surrounding Zelenskyy, Trump, and Putin, the deeper story unfolds quietly — in apartments without heat, in stairwells lit by candles, in elderly hands that have already survived too much history to count.

Ukraine is one of the oldest countries in Europe demographically. Nearly one-fifth of its population — approximately 7 million people — is over 65. Before February 2022, about 5% of Ukrainians lived below the poverty line. Today, nearly a quarter do. Among seniors, poverty has surged to nearly 80%.

For older adults — many of whom survived the Holocaust, Stalinist repression, Soviet collapse, and decades of economic instability — this war is layered onto a lifetime of upheaval.

They stay in cities with intermittent electricity.They stay when medical systems fracture.They stay in a country whose language, culture, and identity are under direct assault.

They understand something deeply: presence itself can be resistance.

In this context, humanitarian work becomes more than aid. It becomes a stabilizing force.

Organizations like Action-PSJ, which has worked in the region for nearly 50 years, operate in partnership with local Ukrainian NGOs and Jewish community networks to fill critical gaps that larger systems cannot always reach quickly enough.

The work is practical and immediate:

Home-based medical care for isolated seniors

Home-based medical care for isolated seniors

Delivery of medications and pharmacy access

Delivery of medications and pharmacy access

Microgrants that allow elders to prioritize urgent needs — heat, food, repairs, utilities

Microgrants that allow elders to prioritize urgent needs — heat, food, repairs, utilities

Telehealth services in partnership with the Jewish Medical Center of Dnipro

Telehealth services in partnership with the Jewish Medical Center of Dnipro

Art therapy and psychosocial support to address chronic trauma

Art therapy and psychosocial support to address chronic trauma

These efforts do not replace large-scale humanitarian institutions. They complement them. Large organizations bring scale and infrastructure. Grassroots and diaspora-connected networks bring speed, trust, and granular knowledge of who is falling through the cracks.

Over the past four years, what has become increasingly clear is that sustainable resilience requires both.

Humanitarian response in Ukraine is not static. It evolves alongside the war — from emergency evacuations to long-term stabilization. What began as crisis relief has become sustained accompaniment.

For elderly Ukrainians — Jewish and non-Jewish alike — that accompaniment matters. It means access to medication in blackout conditions. It means a social worker checking in during weeks of drone strikes. It means the dignity of deciding which urgent need to address when pensions no longer stretch far enough.

It also means something less measurable: knowing they have not been forgotten.

As Jews, the anniversary of this war carries particular resonance. Jewish history is marked by displacement, endurance, and the preservation of identity under pressure. The elderly Jewish population of Ukraine carries living memory of the Holocaust and Soviet antisemitism. Their resilience today is part of a longer arc of survival.

In recent months, the concept of solidarity has resurfaced in global conversations about Ukraine. One definition describes solidarity as three intertwined commitments: speaking, learning, and acting.

Speaking — ensuring prolonged war does not become invisible.Learning — staying informed despite fatigue.Acting — supporting structures that sustain civilian life.

Four years into a war that was supposed to last four days, fatigue is real. War fatigue. Compassion fatigue. Political fatigue.

But fatigue cannot become indifference.

As Passover approaches — the Jewish narrative of liberation from narrow places — we are reminded that redemption begins with recognition. Someone must see. Someone must respond.

Ukraine’s endurance has surprised the world. It is sustained daily not only by military defense, but by civic networks, humanitarian partnerships, and ordinary people who continue to light candles in the dark.

Four years. Not four days.

The question now is not whether Ukraine can survive another week. It has shown it can.

The deeper question is whether global solidarity — in its speaking, learning, and acting — will endure alongside it.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)