President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine set a somber tone on Monday for the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion, posting a short video praising Ukrainians for their sacrifices and honoring those who died.
No major events were planned. For Ukrainians, it was a day to remember what was lost: loved ones and previous lives.
Mr. Zelensky, together with his wife and the visiting leaders of allied nations, later went to Kyiv’s central Maidan Square to commemorate fallen soldiers and place candles in their honor.
A few blocks away, people visited a memorial wall covered in hundreds of photographs of dead soldiers.
“Sleep in peace, boys,” said Olha Vitko, 45, who said she had come that morning to see the cost the country was paying.
Denys Riapolov, 32, said he felt only “horror and sorrow” as he passed by the memorial wall. Mr. Riapolov, a soldier, said he was still awaiting victory over Russia — which “unfortunately it will not happen soon.”
The anniversary comes at a moment of heightened anxiety in Ukraine, as recent remarks by President Trump — and his push to draw closer to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — have raised fears about the country’s future.
Vlad Krupko, 26, a drone pilot in the Ukrainian military, said this anniversary had been the hardest for him, and urged allies not to turn away.
“If the world truly wants to fight for human values, for democracy, for understanding and tolerance, they have a clear example here in Ukraine where they can learn what that means,” he said.
In Hamburg, Germany, Olha Shtepan, a Ukrainian refugee, started crying on her way to work at a local supermarket. “It’s a wound that doesn’t heal,” she said of the invasion that began Feb. 24, 2022. “Sometimes, I manage to not think of all what has happened, but on a day like today it is terrible.”
Three years ago, when Russia attacked, Ms. Shtepan said, she was babysitting for her sister’s children in Kyiv. Her own children were with her husband in Irpin, a nearby suburb that was partly occupied by Russia in the first weeks of the war. She grabbed the children and rushed to Irpin to join her family — heading into greater danger.
“At that time, I did not know that we are going to hell,” she said by voice message from Germany.
After more than a week of heavy bombing, they evacuated with four children in a flow of people fleeing over the remnants of a blown-up bridge. “We were there,” she said of the bridge, which became a symbol of the suffering in the early part of the war.
The family left for Germany, but the pain remains. “The whole month of February for us, all Ukrainians who went through those horrors, it’s a terrible month,” Ms. Shtepan said.
Across Ukraine, there are memorials. Some, like destroyed cars of those who tried to flee that litter the countryside, remain as they did back then, a reminder of what was lost. Others are newly created, as the war continues.
Ukraine Wow, a public organization that promotes Ukrainian culture, created a 12-foot-high animated sculpture of a heart at the central railway station in Kyiv this month. The project collects messages in memory of those who have died in war, and the heart beats faster each time one is received.
On Monday afternoon, the interactive heart was steadily beating and showing tributes to the dead.
“Maksym Lyzya, your smile is always with us,” read one message. “My dear brother Vyacheslav Makarets, 48, I am proud of you and I miss you,” read another. As the heart kept beating, the messages — “Sofiyka Holynska, forever 6” — kept coming.
Nataliia Novosolova contributed reporting from Kyiv and Yurii Shyvala from Lviv, Ukraine.
