KYIV, Ukraine (JTA) — Viktoria Maksimovich’s students at the Sha’alavim Jewish Day School no longer run for shelters when air raid sirens sound.

“They don’t want to hear the alarms. They don’t care about the shots and bombs. They don’t care about it. This is the biggest problem right now, as they won’t look for a shelter,” she said in a virtual interview from her school in Kharkiv, Ukraine. “It’s like usual life for them, and a lot of them grew up like this during the war and don’t remember normal life.”

Indeed, the Russian invasion, which marks its fourth anniversary on Tuesday, has reshaped everything in the lives of Ukrainian Jews, from big choices about whether to stay or flee to the seemingly mundane decision about whether to take the elevator or the stairs when visiting high-rise buildings.

With Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure a near-daily occurrence, taking the elevator means risking being trapped for hours if the power goes out. Recognizing that the dilemma has trapped elderly Jews in their homes, Maksimovich and her colleagues recently organized a service day for their students, who baked challahs and hiked up many flights of stairs to deliver them to Kharkiv’s elderly Jews.

“They managed it and were so happy about it because they met those old people and saw in their eyes, ‘You are here and brought us challahs and candles for Shabbat,’” Maksimovich recalled. “It was amazing.”

The anniversary is a grim one for Ukrainians, with the Russian and Ukrainian armies locked in a bloody stalemate and support from the United States and Europe increasingly uncertain. Ukrainian cities are regularly bombarded with drones and missiles, inflicting heavy casualties and making it increasingly challenging for civilians to complete basic daily activities.

The last four months have been particularly challenging due to power and water cuts that have left Ukrainians frigid and in the dark. During the first three years of war, especially in the metropolitan center of Kyiv, life went on largely as normal between Russian attacks. Now, mobile “resilience hubs” offering warmth and device-charging stations dot the landscape, and the sound of generators is overpowering.

For Ukraine’s Jews, the situation means that children gather in bomb shelters to light Shabbat candles, the elderly rely on intermittent aid........

© The Times of Israel