How We Survived Winter in Wartime
As millions of Ukrainians face their first winter of the war, I share in their dread because I know how brutal a winter war can be. As a child in Sarajevo, Bosnia, I survived three long winters in a city under siege. I endured the cold and deprivation alongside the constant anxiety that I might lose my parents to a bullet or a mortar shell every time they went out to forage for wood or water. War and winter are relentless, but so is the human spirit. This is why I have hope that the Ukrainian people will survive this winter with grit—and even some grace.
The siege of Sarajevo started in the spring of 1992, and during the first few months, the daily onslaught of thunderous explosions made our apartment building shudder, forcing us to seek refuge in the moldy basement. By the
