在一篇日期为 February 13, 2026 的访谈中，乌克兰小说家 Andrey Kurkov 描述了俄罗斯于 February 2022 发动全面入侵近 4 年后，基辅（Kyiv）的日常生活；同时，美国向总统 Volodymyr Zelenskiy 施压，要求在数月内举行选举并接受一项和平协议，据报美国目标是在 June 2026 前结束战争。Kurkov 回忆说，由于对能源基础设施的长期打击导致居民供电断断续续、几乎没有暖气，他在 mid-January 离开了 Kyiv；他表示自己公寓降到 2C (35F)，甚至音乐会也因场馆未供暖而取消，而咖啡馆则把发电机成本转嫁到顾客帐单上。他把此刻置于国际决心逐渐消退与残酷寒冬的背景之下；在他的叙述中，对试图在每晚空袭警报中继续工作、继续睡觉的平民而言，冬天已变得和飞弹与无人机一样致命。

Kurkov 说，压力在时间与耐力上都可量化：他称为「英勇水管工」的修复队有时从一个紧急状况赶到另一个，连续 3 或 4 天不睡觉工作，有人心脏病发作，还有数人死亡；他并对比 2022 年最初的全国凝聚与当下在前线士兵、海外难民、境内流离失所者以及仍留在家中的人之间的碎裂。他提到仍有「未知数量」的乌克兰人留在被占领土，并主张只有民主国家团结出资重建，乌克兰才可能重新连结；同时他也以自身经历描述战争如何改变他的工作节奏，包括出版 3 册日记卷，且直到 November 2024 才完成一部延宕已久的长篇小说。谈到政治，他把 Trump 描绘为寻求一桩商业交易，并警告仓促的条款可能等同接受领土丧失；他也引用民意变化：他说民调显示如今有更多乌克兰人考虑让出领土，但他仍估计对 Zelenskiy 的支持约为 50% 到 60%，并呼吁战时应围绕现任、经选举产生的总统凝聚。

Kurkov 的核心警告关于时间：如果乌克兰「让步」，他预测俄罗斯会在休整后带著新要求回来，可能是 2 或 3 年后，甚至 2 或 3 个月后；而让被夺取的土地合法化，可能使其他地方的类似战争被常态化。他只在非常狭窄的形式下勾勒有条件的妥协，例如某些安排下领土不归还给乌克兰，但也不被正式转成俄罗斯领土；同时他强调，任何持久的结果都需要持续的经济、外交与军事压力，而不是关于「共同语言」的修辞。放眼停火之后，他预期可见的物理创伤大约需要 10 年或更久才能抹去，心理伤害会持续更长，而社会在战后将辩论合作者与叛徒；他也提到战时文化快速改变，称士兵的幽默在 2022 入侵后 6 或 7 个月内大多消失，即便幽默仍是平民的应对工具。就个人而言，他希望战争在 2026 或 2027 结束，并以历史区间衡量自己的生命：他指出自己出生于第二次世界大战后 16 年，但如今觉得自己在这场战争中度过了「一半」的人生。

In an interview dated February 13, 2026, Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov describes daily life in Kyiv nearly 4 years after Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, as the US presses President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to hold elections and accept a peace deal within months, with the US reportedly aiming to end the war by June 2026. Kurkov recounts leaving Kyiv in mid-January after prolonged strikes on energy infrastructure left residents with intermittent power and little heating, saying his apartment fell to 2C (35F) and that even concerts were canceled because venues were unheated while cafés passed generator costs onto customers’ bills. He situates the moment against a backdrop of fading international resolve and a brutal winter that, in his telling, has become as threatening as missiles and drones for civilians trying to keep working and sleeping through nightly air alerts.

Kurkov says the strain is quantifiable in both time and endurance: repair crews he calls “heroic plumbers” sometimes worked 3 or 4 days without sleep moving from one emergency to another, with some suffering heart attacks and several dying, and he contrasts the initial national consolidation of 2022 with today’s fragmentation across front-line soldiers, refugees abroad, displaced people, and those still at home. He notes an “unknown number” of Ukrainians remain in occupied territories, and argues Ukraine can be reconnected only if democratic countries unite to fund reconstruction, while personally describing how war altered his work rhythm, including publishing 3 volumes of diaries and only finishing a long-delayed novel in November 2024. On politics, he frames Trump as seeking a business deal and warns that rapid terms could amount to accepting territorial loss, while citing sentiment shifts: he says polling suggests more Ukrainians now consider conceding territory, yet he still estimates roughly 50% to 60% support for Zelenskiy and urges consolidation around the sitting, elected president during wartime.

Kurkov’s core warning is temporal: if Ukraine “gives in,” he predicts Russia will return with new demands after a break of 2 or 3 years or even 2 or 3 months, and that legitimizing seized land risks normalizing similar wars elsewhere. He sketches conditional compromises only in narrow forms, such as arrangements where territories are not returned to Ukraine but also not formally turned into Russian territory, while stressing that any durable outcome requires sustained economic, diplomatic, and military pressure rather than rhetoric about “common language.” Looking beyond a ceasefire, he expects visible physical scars to take about 10 years or more to erase, psychological damage to persist longer, and society to debate collaborators and traitors after the war; he also notes wartime culture changed quickly, saying soldiers’ humor largely disappeared 6 or 7 months after the 2022 invasion even as humor remains a civilian coping tool. Personally, he hopes the war ends in 2026 or 2027, and measures his own life in historic intervals, noting he was born 16 years after World War II yet now feels he has spent “half” his life in this war.