Amid Russian Strikes, a Remote Corner of Ukraine Beckons

It was well past midnight in Mukachevo, a city of cobblestone streets tucked into Ukraine’s western tip, and a group of students lingered by the river, debating what to grab from a nearby 24/7 supermarket. A van pulled up, and out spilled a rowdier crowd of young men — loud, tipsy and visibly thirsty for more.

It looked like a classic Sunday night, before the workweek begins. But in wartime Ukraine — where curfews and Russian air assaults have turned the nights into something between tense silence and sudden explosions — it was an exceptional scene.

“Here, we do not hear the sound of explosions, we do not have rockets, we do not have frequent air alarms,” said Oleksandr Pop, 20, one of the students. “We don’t have the same experience of war.”

Ukraine’s capital region of Kyiv has reeled from several recent nights of record-breaking Russian drone attacks, with air raid alerts wailing for nearly 130 hours over the past month. By comparison, Mukachevo and the surrounding region of Transcarpathia have endured only one-tenth as much time under alert.