Facebook "today is for us a bulletin board full of obituaries," says Olena Halushka, a well-known activist from Kyiv.

She is currently traveling in Poland, speaking fluent English on the rule of law and anti-corruption, which is her area of ​​expertise.

Only when you ask her about the war do her restless hands show how depressed the situation is for the young woman.

"Every time I go on social media, I see: this one is dead, that one is being buried, a third has been wounded."

Gerhard Gnauck

Political correspondent for Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania based in Warsaw.

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It's not just because she has a lot of friends on Facebook.

Death also strikes friends in the true sense of the word.

"I used to be with the Plast organization, the boy scouts," says Haluschka.

“Eleven people have fallen from our organization since February.

After that I studied in Kyiv at the Academy for Managers.

Four young men fell from their graduates.

Young people who should form the new elite and change this country.”

Russia's war entered its second phase in mid-April.

The first, which some observers in Ukraine mockingly call “Putin's blitzkrieg”, ended with a Russian defeat: the Russians had to withdraw from the occupied strip in the north from Chernobyl to Kharkiv;

they were able to hold a comparable strip to the south.

The second phase, at least for the Ukrainians, cost more than the first.

It was an attempt to conquer the entire Donbass region, i.e. the Donetsk and Luhansk administrative regions.

Even after months of great effort, the Russians have only managed to do this in the Luhansk region.

Meanwhile, the price Ukraine is paying for containing the invasion has skyrocketed.

Members of the urban elites of the metropolises have also been hit more and more frequently.

For example the four graduates from Kyiv.

At the end of June, the leadership academy paid tribute to a fallen man on Twitter: "Semen Oblomej gave his life for the freedom and future of Ukraine." He took part in the liberation of Bucha, which became known through the atrocities of Russian soldiers, and later fought in the Donbass.

"Glory to the hero!

Rest in peace.” The Twitter entry shows the dead man: a boy in a plaid shirt with headphones in his ears.

Plus a candle.

Facebook and Twitter are full of mourning posts

The dead man whose death caused the greatest shock in recent weeks was the 24-year-old activist Roman Ratuschnyj.

"The war takes away the best from us," it was said in the media.

Ratushnyj had a law degree and was a candidate for the Kiev city council on the list of Mayor Vitali Klitschko's pro-European UDAR party.

When the war began in February, he volunteered for the army.

On June 9, his unit was ambushed in eastern Ukraine, and Ratushny fell.

Kiev historian Anna Kaluger wrote that his death was "a blow that took the breath away of an entire generation".

Despite the frequent air raid alarms, Ratushnyj was accompanied by hundreds of fellow citizens on his final journey through Kyiv.

In July, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen dedicated the first paragraph of a speech to the fallen: "A month ago, a young Ukrainian hero died on the battlefield.

But Ratuschnyj's dreams live on."