Originally posted on Peter Greer’s blog.

For 476 days, we’ve heard about the dire realities of war in Ukraine: Thriving cities abandoned. Loved ones missing. Lives and livelihoods plundered.

In June, farmers HOPE previously served in the Kherson region woke up to the reality of losing yet another harvest. With fields under water from enemy attacks on the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant, their crops and profits have been wiped out.

While traveling to Ukraine to visit our HOPE colleagues recently, these scenes were at the forefront of my mind. The horror and destruction of war I’d read about was real. But as I spent more time with staff and entrepreneurs there, one thing became clear: Even as bombs weakened infrastructure and devastated neighborhoods, they most certainly did not crush the Ukrainian spirit.

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