Russian Missiles Reach Ukraine's Far West
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- Russian strikes on the night of November 18–19 killed at least 25 people, including three children, and injured nearly 100 across Ukraine, with Ternopil in the far west hit despite lying roughly 900 kilometers from the launch points.
- Ukraine's population in government-controlled areas has shrunk from 42 million in 2021 to an estimated 31–32 million in 2025, with 20% of territory no longer under Kyiv's control and a planned nationwide census postponed because of the war.
- Kharkiv has been shelled more than 21,000 times since early 2024, with over 900 additional attacks recorded in the first months of 2025, damaging more than 80,000 infrastructure objects including nearly 38,000 residential buildings, according to Ukrainian estimates cited by the correspondent.
- Indian students in Ukraine have fallen from roughly 24,000 before February 2022 to about 3,000 today, according to Kyiv-based surgeon Anurag Krishna, who said three years of war-related trauma cases have given him surgical exposure he could not have imagined elsewhere.
- Kharkiv communities have built modern underground schools running hybrid online-offline classes so children's education continues despite relentless shelling; a local leader told the reporter, "We cannot allow our future generations to grow up uneducated."
- Ukraine's only land entry route runs through Poland, since all air routes remain blocked, and the 14-hour Lviv-to-Kharkiv train journey carries an undercurrent of fear as passengers check missile-alert apps while carriages cross a country at war.
Why it matters: Ukraine's population in government-controlled territory has fallen roughly 10 million since 2021, and the correspondent's west-to-east trip demonstrates that geographic distance from the front no longer offers safety — Ternopil in the far west was struck by missiles traveling ~900km. The cumulative human and infrastructural toll, with Kharkiv alone logging 80,000+ damaged structures, underscores that rebuilding and demographic recovery remain distant prospects even as nightly shelter routines have become normalized across the country.
