For Major Yuriy Galich, the chief of the fire department in Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine, “it’s still 23 February”. On his desk is a calendar which is stuck on the day before the war started. “I want to keep it that way until this nightmare is over and we can wake up,” he tells Bel Trew, our international correspondent, reporting from the war’s bloodiest battlefield.
The condition of the Ukrainians is a salutary reminder to those of us fortunate to be hundreds of miles from the front line that, bleak though this winter might be, there is much for which we have to be grateful. There are millions of people in Britain who are finding it a struggle to stay warm, and there are many suffering the lesser hardship of being unable to see friends and family over Christmas. But our troubles are put into perspective by the privations of Ukrainians as they fight for their freedom, suffering power cuts, indiscriminate shelling from Putin’s forces, and the death and destruction of war.
That does not mean we should be uncritical of our government, and The Independent has led the way in calling on our new prime minister to adopt a more constructive approach to industrial relations in the public sector. We understand his argument about the dangers of an inflationary wage-price spiral, but our view is that the crisis of staffing in the NHS – and in social care – is so serious that higher pay is the only way to stem the exodus of nursing and care staff.
