The alert on my smartphone woke me at 4am on April 24th. My mother Tamara and my brother Bohdan sent almost simultaneous messages to say the Russians were attacking the western suburbs of Kyiv. It was extremely loud. They were moving to the corridors outside their respective apartments, to protect themselves from shrapnel and flying glass. I was on the front line in Donetsk and the two people I care about most were in greater danger than I was. The explosions continued for more than an hour. “Are you alive?” I texted when the attack on Kyiv subsided. Vladimir Putin’s response to Ukraine’s acceptance in March of a total, unconditional ceasefire was to step up drone and missile attacks on our cities. The increase in Russian attacks on population centres was the most important development of April. On April 4th, the Russians fired missiles at a playground and a restaurant in Kryvyi Rih, killing 20 civilians, nine of them children. READ MORE On April 13th, Palm Sunday, two Russian missiles exploded in the centre of Sumy, killing at least 31 civilians. Russians claim to be devout Orthodox Christians who support traditional values, but they wantonly killed civilians on a Christian holiday. It was further proof that Russia is a terrorist state. I no longer weep at such atrocities; we have suffered too many losses. But I am still enraged. There’s a tradition in the army. When the Russians kill large numbers of civilians, we vent our anger by writing, for example, “for Kryvyi Rih” or “for Sumy” on the casings of rockets and artillery shells. Ukrainian rockets painted with the words For Kryvyi Rih, referring to the Russian missile strike that killed 20 civilians on April 4th Svyatoshyn, the Kyiv suburb adjacent to Vyshneve, where my family live, was hit badly in the April 24th bombardment. My mother had driven me to Svyatoshyn on the morning of the full-scale invasion so I could re-enlist in the army. I watched video of civilians being dug out of destroyed buildings which were familiar to me. Such attacks would be tragic in any city, but when it is your home, it is even more distressful. The following day, on the last Friday in April, Gen Yaroslav Moskalik, the deputy director of Russian army operations, was killed by a car bomb which exploded when he walked out of his apartment building in Moscow. What a contrast between arbitrary Russian bombardments that kill civilians and precise attacks on Russian officers! In December, Gen Igor Kirillov, who oversaw Russia’s use of chemical weapons in Ukraine, was also assassinated in Moscow, by a booby-trapped scooter. Ukrainian authorities do not comment on these operations, but I would not be surprised if the Russian generals were eliminated by our intelligence service. For 11 years, since this wretched war started, we have seen brutality and suffering on a scale I could not have imagined. Yet spring has come to Donetsk, as it does every year, with irresistible beauty For several days before Easter, the Russians bombarded my area of the front line between Kramatorsk and Slovyansk with glide bombs and exploding drones. Aerial attacks ceased during Putin’s Easter “ceasefire”, but artillery shelling continued. The Czech foreign minister Jan Lipavský said the partial truce was “like going on a hunger strike between breakfast and lunch and secretly eating candy”. Putin this week announced a three-day ceasefire from May 8th through 10th, while Russia celebrates the 80th anniversary of its second World War victory over Nazi Germany. As president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, Putin just wants peace and quiet for his parade. There is no reason to wait until May 8th. [ I think Putin is testing Trump, to see how far he can go and how many advantages he can getOpens in new window ] When I was a small child, my paternal grandmother, Baba Lyuba, took us to the Orthodox midnight Mass every Easter. I hated standing through the long service in a cold church while the priest spoke in old Ukrainian, which I could not understand. After the service, parishioners stood in a half circle outside the church, holding Easter cakes called paska, with a lit candle in the middle of each cake. Easter reminds me of my husband, Illia Serbin, who was killed in a Russian bombardment in Donetsk in 2018. Illia and I decorated Easter eggs during our first weekend together, in Mariupol, 10 years ago. We got engaged that weekend. An Easter celebration in a drone pilot's dugout, with a lit candle in a paska cake This year, I ordered paskas from a bakery in Kramatorsk and sent them to “my boys” – drone pilots in frontline dug outs. In the town where my drone platoon, the Hellish Hornets, are based, the rest of us gathered for a feast of meat, eggs, potatoes, salad, wine and paska. I’m not sure my boys go to church, but I think most of them believe in God. It’s true there are no atheists in a foxhole. On Easter Sunday, I posted this message on my platoon’s loop: “Today, on this day of the resurrection of Christ, we must believe that good will triumph over evil, that life will triumph over death. Even if you don’t believe in God, we must believe in hope and in ourselves, because there is light in every one of us. We hold hope and life in our hands.” For 11 years, since this wretched war started, we have seen brutality and suffering on a scale I could not have imagined. Yet spring has come to Donetsk, as it does every year, with irresistible beauty. One of my drone pilots spotted two deer leaping gracefully across fields at dawn and sent the video to me. Everywhere I look, there are dandelions and trees in flower. Deer filmed by a drone pilot as they cross fields in eastern Ukraine in April Lt Yulia Mykytenko stands among spring blossom in Donetsk, Eastern Ukraine In early April, the commander of a platoon which monitors Russian radio traffic sent me a voice recording, asking if I recognised the language. I didn’t. It was Chinese. A few days later, a neighbouring battalion captured two Chinese serving with Russian forces. I believe they were criminals who crossed the Sino-Russian border and signed up to stay out of prison, like most of the foreigners in the Russian army. [ ‘Denys was skinny and muscular, with fair hair and blue-grey eyes. He was killed near Donetsk in February’Opens in new window ] The week after Easter, Donald Trump’s “final offer” was revealed in western media. It is worse than we expected. The main points are: “de jure” recognition of Russian sovereignty over occupied Crimea; “de facto” recognition of Russia’s occupation of much of the oblasts of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia; a ban on Ukraine joining Nato and the lifting of sanctions against Russia. The recognition of Russian rule over Crimea is the most shocking point, because it violates the basic tenet of international law which is the illegality of seizing territory by force. No European country had done this since the second World War. Every country which shares a border with Russia is now in jeopardy. The draft agreement does not say who will recognise Russian sovereignty over Crimea, but one assumes it will be the US only. Zelenskiy said recognition of the annexation of Crimea would contravene Ukraine’s Constitution and is unacceptable. Trump called Zelenskiy’s reaction “inflammatory”. If we refuse to accept the loss of Crimea, I think Trump will pile on even more of Putin’s maximalist demands – for example, the disarmament of Ukraine. There is no provision for a Russian military withdrawal. This is very dangerous, because Russia will be able to use the nearly 20 per cent of Ukraine it occupies as a staging ground for further aggression, as Putin did throughout the so-called Minsk process from 2014-2022. The lifting of economic sanctions will increase the threat to Europe, because Russia will be able to rebuild its war machine. The Europeans seem to have gone quiet lately. France’s Emmanuel Macron is an exception. After the attack on Sumy, he said: “This war, everyone knows that Russia alone wanted it. Today it is clear that Russia alone continues to pursue it.” This needed to be said, because Trump unjustly accuses Ukraine of starting the war and of dragging out negotiations. A meme posted on Ukrainian social media shows Volodymyr Zelenskiy holding all the cards, a reference to Donald Trump's 'You don't have the cards right now' remark to Zelenskiy in the Oval Office I think the Europeans are waiting to see what comes from Trump’s “peace plan”. I fear that some secretly hope Trump will impose a cosmetic peace so that everything can go back to “normal”, as it was before 2014. Except it never was normal, because before Ukraine were the Russian wars in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria and Africa. Blindness to Russian war crimes enabled Russia to start the war in Ukraine. If Russia is never punished, it will strengthen Putin’s belief that he is invincible. Trump’s “peace plan” fulfils almost all of Putin’s wishes. I think there will be a ceasefire in May or over the summer, because the war has dead-ended. It will take at least six months to stabilise the situation and to demobilise. In February, Trump called Zelenskiy “a dictator without elections”. At the end of March, Putin called for the “temporary administration” of Ukraine by the United Nations. They hope to replace Zelenskiy with a Russian puppet. But attempts to humiliate Zelenskiy backfired. His approval rating shot up from 57 per cent in February to 67 per cent in March. Ukraine cannot elect a new president while the war continues. If there is a ceasefire and an election, I’m not sure Zelenskiy would want to stand. He looks extremely tired and exhausted, far older than he did three years ago. The month ended with tentative optimism. After meeting Zelenskiy at Pope Francis’s funeral, Trump questioned Putin’s willingness to make peace. And on April 30th, Ukraine and the US appeared to have concluded a better minerals deal than the one suspended after February’s argument in the Oval Office. Mention of reimbursing the US for past military aid has been dropped, and profits will be reinvested in postwar Ukraine. I hope the deal will give the US a stake in defending Ukraine. It may be extortionate, but I’d rather share our resources with the US than with Russia. How Good It Is I Have No Fear of Dying: Lieutenant Yulia Mykytenko’s Fight for Ukraine by Lara Marlowe is published by Head of Zeus.