Kateryna Halushka often sits alone staring at her phone until she gets a sign of life from her boyfriend, a Ukrainian soldier fighting at the front. As for thousands of others, the Russian invasion has turned her love life into an anxious wait for messages, calls and short-lived reunions. Daria Yedamova, whose husband Artur was serving in the northeastern Kharkiv region, is pessimistic about things improving soon. "Of course I wait for him to come back. Of course I want to believe that there will be peace forever. But we live in the real world,” she says. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES