Ukraine has reached a grim milestone: the brutal war with Russia has now lasted exactly as long as World War One.

For the indomitable Ukrainian people, it’s 1,568 days of relentless heartbreak, resilience, and a stubborn refusal to yield to Vladimir Putin’s bloody war machine.

Oksana Tkach’s nightmare began before the invasion was even officially declared. Her husband, 36-year-old staff sergeant Denys Tkach, was the very first Ukrainian soldier killed.

Manning a border checkpoint near Zorynivka in the Luhansk region, Denys ordered his five young men to retreat while he stayed behind with a single machine gun.

At 3:40 AM on February 24, 2022, an overwhelming Russian advance unit gunned him down. Less than an hour later, Putin announced his "special military operation."

Just hours after Denys's death, 32-year-old Oksana faced the agonizing task of washing his bullet-ridden body to bury him in his wedding suit.

"I don’t understand how you could put so many bullets into a man," she said.

But grief quickly turned to fierce resolve. Driven by the same unyielding spirit defining her nation, Oksana decided to join the military. Now serving with the First Azov Corps, Lubart Brigade, she manages a support hotline for military families.

"I want to serve. I want to contribute in some way to bringing our victory closer," she declared, despite the harsh reality of seeing her two young children only rarely.

The toll of this endless conflict is felt across the country.

In Kyiv, 37-year-old Lyudmyla Yakubenko opened a bakery after her husband went to the front. Running a business in a warzone is a daily struggle for survival. With so many men fighting, workers and repair technicians are virtually nonexistent.

When a Russian missile strike devastated her neighborhood in May, shattering her cafe's windows and ripping out doors, Lyudmyla didn't break.

Finding her ovens miraculously intact, she immediately started baking bread for the emergency workers battling the nearby fires. "It gave me a sense of purpose on an otherwise terrible day," she recalled.

In Kharkiv, 73-year-old Elena Vizer faces the silent agony of wartime loneliness. She lives on the eighth floor of an apartment block in North Saltivka, Ukraine's most bombed housing estate.

Almost everyone else fled, leaving her isolated in the ruins. Walking with crutches, she can't even reach the neighborhood shelter.

When sirens wail and bombs drop, she simply sits in her corridor. "You can run, but there’s no guarantee you’ll make it," she said, before adding with quiet defiance, "The war will end one day. That’s what we keep telling each other: 'Everything will be OK.'"

As the conflict stretches past the duration of the Great War with no end in sight, Ukrainians continue to fight, bake, and endure.

For Oksana, the ultimate goal remains crystal clear: "I want to give my children a better future, when they wake up and no longer hear air raid sirens, when our victory finally comes."