Category: Washington Post

U.S. and Iranian officials completed a round of nuclear negotiations Thursday in Geneva in the shadow of a large-scale U.S. military buildup around Iran. The sides made “significant progress” and agreed to meet next week to discuss technical details in Vienna, said Oman’s foreign minister, the mediator of the talks.

The apparent plan to continue negotiations, after three rounds in recent weeks, could indicate that President Donald Trump remains open to diplomacy, at least for now. A senior Iranian official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share details from the closed-door talks, said that the meetings were “serious,” but that the negotiations “still have miles to go” to resolve differences. The Trump administration has yet to weigh in on how the talks went or what is next and did not respond to a request for comment.

To avert conflict, negotiators will have to find an off-ramp that Iran might accept while also giving the Trump administration the chance to claim a win.

In statements reported midway through talks by Iran’s state-backed media, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei expressed hope that by the afternoon, following a pause for each side to consult with capitals, they would focus on what Iran considers the two main issues — restraints on its nuclear program and the lifting of U.S. sanctions.

The talks may have been “the most serious round of negotiations with the Trump administration ever,” said Ali Vaez, an Iran expert with the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank. He said he had spoken with the negotiating teams on both sides Thursday.

“They are the most decisive, because everybody understands what’s at stake and what the price of failure would be,” and if continued over days, “… I think one could be hopeful that maybe they could reach an understanding,” Vaez said.

The U.S. military has shifted scores of aircraft to bases in Europe and the Middle East since a round of talks ended last week without a breakthrough, amid an intermittent drumbeat of threats from Trump that began in response to Tehran’s violent crackdown on protesters last month. The U.S. military presence, assembled under a president who campaigned on stopping wars and criticized the era of U.S. military intervention in the Middle East, is among the largest in the region in more than two decades, since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Governments in the region and some of Washington’s closest allies have expressed concerns over what could result. At the same time, U.S. military officials have warned that any direct conflict with Iran would be lengthy and could dangerously deplete already-low U.S. weapons stocks.

White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner arrived early Thursday in Geneva, where they were also scheduled to meet with representatives from Ukraine and Russia in hopes of reviving apparently stalled negotiations over an end to that war.

Iran has said that its focus is on statements by Trump that it can never have a nuclear weapon and must take verifiable steps to that end, in exchange for the rollback of sanctions that have hobbled its economy.

U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have voiced a range of demands — many of them backed by Israel — including an end to Iran’s support for armed groups in the region and curtailment of its ballistic missile program.

Rubio, Witkoff, and others on the U.S. side have pushed for Iran, which international inspectors say has amassed hundreds of pounds of near-weapons-grade, highly enriched uranium, to surrender that material and accept a ban on future enrichment.

Iranian negotiators have insisted on their right to enrichment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. “There is no doubt that the United States is interested in addressing nonnuclear issues as well,” Vaez said. “I think the [U.S.] president believes that if he is to sell a deal it also has to address missiles and Iran’s regional activities.”

“But it is also clear that on those issues a substantive solution might not necessarily be available,” he said. Vaez suggested that a deal on nonnuclear issues might be struck that is “more symbolic than substantive. But it would definitely not amount to the kind of capitulation that the U.S. was hoping it would be able to achieve with heightened pressure on Iran.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who headed the Iranian delegation, delivered via his Omani counterpart, Badr al-Busaidi, a new proposal that included “token” nuclear enrichment for medical purposes and other research, according to two people familiar with the proposal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about closed-door diplomacy.

The Iranian offer includes a pause on most enrichment for three to five years, during which time Iran would be allowed to maintain 1.5% enrichment for medical purposes at a Tehran research reactor, said one of the people with knowledge of the offer, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive details. After the pause, a “normal” level of enrichment would be handled by a regional consortium.

But Iran might be open to locking, under supervision of international inspectors, the sites of vast underground centrifuges and storage sites for enriched uranium that Trump has said were “obliterated” by U.S. and Israeli bombing last summer, the person with knowledge of the offer said.

The senior Iranian official said after the talks that dismantling Iran’s nuclear sites remained a red line for Tehran and that Iran would not agree to ship enriched uranium out of the country.

Rafael Mariano Grossi — the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency that has inspected Iran’s program on the ground since the 2015 nuclear deal signed under the Obama administration, from which Trump withdrew during his first term — also attended the Thursday’s talks.

Iran has amassed an amount of highly enriched uranium beyond levels needed for most nonmilitary use, although it has said repeatedly it has no intention of producing a nuclear weapon. Grossi said this month there is no evidence of an active plan to build a bomb.

In the annual State of the Union address, Trump said on Tuesday that he preferred a diplomatic solution, while adding he would “never allow” Iran to have a nuclear weapon: “Can’t let that happen.”

Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, said Thursday that an agreement was “within reach” if the talks stick to Iran’s pledge not to build a nuclear weapon. He said Iran’s foreign minister has “sufficient support and authority” to come to a deal in the negotiations.

“There is no doubt that the United States is interested in addressing non-nuclear issues as well,” Vaez said. With significant Republican congressional opposition to any deal at all, “I think the [U.S.] president believes that if he is to sell a deal it also has to address missiles and Iran’s regional activities.

“But it is also clear that on those issues a substantive solution might not necessarily be available,” he said.

Last year was the deadliest on record for journalists. For the third year in a row, Israel killed more journalists and media workers than any other country amid the war in Gaza, according to a report released Wednesday by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The report found an increase in the use of drones to kill journalists, with 39 documented cases: 28 by Israel’s military in Gaza, five by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, and four by Russia in Ukraine. The CPJ documented just two drone killings in 2023.

Of the 129 journalists killed around the world in 2025, the Israeli military was responsible for 86, about two-thirds of the deaths, the CPJ found. The death toll is the highest since the New York-based press freedom group started tracking the killing of journalists in 1992.

The Israel Defense Forces “strongly rejects the claims” presented in the report, the IDF said in a statement to the Washington Post on Wednesday.

“The IDF does not intentionally harm journalists or their family members, and on the contrary, operates solely against military targets, in accordance with international law, and employs all possible measures to mitigate harm to civilians, including journalists,” the statement said. “Any claim of intentional harm to civilians — including family members of journalists due to their professional activity, is completely false.”

The second-highest number of killings occurred in Sudan, where nine journalists were killed. Mexico was third with six deaths, followed by Russia with four and the Philippines with three. The Russia tally includes Ukrainian journalists killed by Russian forces in Ukraine.

The Israel-Gaza war is the deadliest conflict on record for journalists, according to the CPJ, with 252 killed as of early January. The CPJ determined that 249 of them were killed by Israel, 209 of whom were Palestinians in Gaza. Hamas killed two Israeli journalists in its Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border attack on Israel.

Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 70,000, the majority of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, following the Hamas attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 people Oct. 7, 2023. In the wake of a fragile Israel-Hamas ceasefire brokered by President Donald Trump in October, Israeli strikes in Gaza have continued.

“Attacks on the media are a leading indicator of attacks on other freedoms, and much more needs to be done to prevent these killings and punish the perpetrators,” CPJ chief executive Jodie Ginsberg said in a statement. “We are all at risk when journalists are killed for reporting the news.”

After an Israeli strike on Nasser hospital in Gaza in August killed journalists Mariam Dagga, Hussam al-Masri, Mohammed Salama, Moaz Abu Taha, and Ahmed Abu Aziz — who were all working with prominent news outlets — and prompted calls for accountability from rights groups, the IDF said in a statement that it “regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and does not target journalists as such.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the attack was a “tragic mishap.”

Israel’s strikes on Gaza meant Palestinian journalists were covering the same bombardments they were trying to survive. In 2023, 77 journalists were killed in the Israel-Gaza war, 72 of whom were Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes. In 2024, Israel killed 82 journalists in Gaza and three in Lebanon, per the CPJ.

Last year, 52 of the 86 journalists killed by Israel were Palestinians in Gaza. The 2025 tally also includes journalists killed by Israel in Iran and Yemen. Meanwhile, one Palestinian journalist was killed by a Palestinian armed group in Gaza in October, by the CPJ’s count.

There have been no credible investigations by Israel of these killings since the Israel-Gaza war began with the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, said Sara Qudah, the CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa regional director.

Israel said it opened an inquiry into the strikes on Nasser hospital. It also said it was reviewing a 2023 Israeli attack in Lebanon that killed a Reuters journalist and injured other reporters, including an American, but U.S. lawmakers said in December that Israel has not held the perpetrators accountable.

“Impunity is becoming a pattern and a norm,” Qudah told the Post. “Israel is able to target and kill journalists with full impunity, with no investigation and no accountability.”

Israel has levied claims, without providing substantial evidence, that some of the journalists it killed were legitimate targets due to accusations that they were working with Hamas, which their outlets have denied. Some journalists were killed in the course of their lives in a war zone, with no sign of targeting. The press freedom group said Israel was undertaking the most “deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists that CPJ has ever documented.”

Qudah said she hoped the International Criminal Court would investigate the killings. “Those who killed these journalists and those who ordered the killings of these journalists should be held accountable and prosecuted,” she said.

The CPJ includes the killing of a journalist in the index if evidence such as interviews with witnesses or verified footage shows they were killed in the line of work — either accidentally in a conflict zone or on a dangerous assignment, or deliberately because of their reporting. The press freedom group determined that 47 of the journalists killed last year were deliberately killed for their work. Under international humanitarian law, journalists are considered civilians and should not be targeted.

The index includes reporters who gather the news and media workers such as interpreters, drivers, and fixers.

The killing of journalists in Mexico and the Philippines underscores systemic safety risks facing reporters in both countries, according to the CPJ: At least one journalist has been killed in Mexico every year for the past decade.

But more than 75% of all journalists slain in 2025 were killed in conflict settings, including Gaza, along with Sudan and Ukraine.

Killings have continued into 2026. In January, the Israeli military struck and killed three journalists, including a CBS News contributor, as they traveled in their car south of Gaza City, rescue officials and local reporters told the Post last month.

The IDF said in a statement that its troops had identified “several suspects who operated a drone affiliated with Hamas in the central Gaza Strip, in a manner that posed a threat to their safety.” The statement did not clarify how the IDF drew the connection to Hamas, or whether it had identified the targets as journalists.

When Sahar Tahvili, a professor at a Swedish university, sat for an interview with Voice of America’s Persian service on Jan. 9, she discussed the security concerns for Iranian viewers using Starlink satellites to circumvent the government’s internet blackouts.

But it was a greeting at the start of the interview that crossed a line with the company’s top brass. She thanked the network for having her before invoking the name of Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s deposed shah: “Let me first pass my greetings to our compatriots in Iran, a nation that, by standing on the right side of history and by responding in the millions to Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi’s call, is shaping historic days for the freedom of our country.”

Later that day, Tahvili received a phone call from the VOA producer who arranged her interview, complaining that she had violated Voice of America’s new policy barring mentions of Pahlavi’s name — which she said she didn’t know about.

“He called me in a very angry way and said, ‘Why did you mention his name?’” Tahvili, adjunct associate professor of AI industrial systems at Sweden’s Mälardalen University, said in an interview. “No one is allowed to mention Pahlavi’s name.” Because she had mentioned him, Tahvili said she was told her interview, which aired live, would not be reposted to social media and she would no longer be welcome on the network.

Critics including Tahvili allege that since the mass protests broke out in the final days of last year, the U.S. government has systematically censored the best-known Iranian opposition figure by banning his name from its broadcasts. They also claim that, in the process, U.S. Agency for Global Media Deputy CEO Kari Lake and the new head of the Persian service, Ali Javanmardi, have exerted control over a government broadcaster that’s long been editorially independent of the U.S. government.

In a January interview with Reuters, President Donald Trump questioned whether Pahlavi has enough support to take over in Iran, but said “that would be fine with me” if he wins over the majority of Iranians. “He seems very nice, but I don’t know how he’d play within his own country,” Trump said.

In the same interview, he remained noncommittal about efforts to pressure regime change in Iran either, saying, “Whether or not it falls or not, it’s going to be an interesting period of time.”

The push to excise Pahlavi’s name was first reported by the Hill.

Lake and Javanmardi, a former VOA contractor recently brought in to run the Persian service, have defended their new rules, saying that they are simply clamping down on an effort by VOA employees eager to see one opposition group prevail over another at a time when Iran’s regime under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is on shaky ground. They say it applies to all opposition leaders, not just Pahlavi.

“We are not in the business of selecting Iran’s political leadership,” Lake said in a statement. “That decision belongs solely to Iran’s 93 million citizens, who have a right to self-determination. Right now, the story should be about them, not the numerous opposition groups outside Iran. Elevating external opposition figures over voices inside the country risks externalizing the conflict in ways that would only benefit the cruel regime and undermine protesters on the ground.”

In a separate statement, Lake called Javanmardi “a respected and fearless journalist” with deep experience reporting on Iran and the region. “His commitment is to journalistic responsibility, truth, and ensuring coverage that aligns with American policy interests and centers the voices of the Iranian people in support of their right to freedom and self-determination.”

The spokesperson did not make Javanmardi available for an interview.

Javanmardi has voiced opinions, however, about Pahlavi on-air, saying in a recent VOA appearance, “The United States government is not going to replace a dictator inside Iran with another totalitarian one who has threatened all his opponents even before coming to power with death and elimination.” In recent months he has also described other media as engaging in “propaganda engineering” and “artificial magnification” of issues in Iran.

Javanmardi has also called out Iranians for not participating in the recent protests. “We should all participate in identifying the mercenaries who did not join the people and are involved in suppressing the people,” he said in one broadcast. “Let’s participate so that they do not have immunity, both inside and outside Iran.”

Under Lake, Voice of America has undergone massive staff cuts. The broadcaster, first set up in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda abroad, suspended most of its programming after Trump issued an executive order in March. Then, Lake cut hundreds of contractors and placed hundreds of full-time staffers on paid administration leave. A federal judge blocked Lake from firing the employees and instructed the agency to uphold its statutory obligations for broadcasting. As a result, Lake brought back broadcasting in a few languages mandated by law, including Farsi.

In January, Congress rejected requests from Lake and the White House to zero out the agency’s budget, approving a $653 million budget. Lake said she was “disappointed” at the move.

VOA’s Persian service, once among its largest divisions, has maintained a skeleton crew since this summer, when Lake briefly ordered staff back and called for some broadcasts amid escalating military tensions between Iran and Israel. Many of those recalled staffers were put back on administrative leave when the conflict simmered.

But when popular uprising broke out in late December, Lake once again ramped up its staffing, bringing back a few dozen employees and contractors.

She also tapped Javanmardi, who years earlier worked as a VOA correspondent based in Irbil, Iraq, to lead the charge. He quickly became a divisive figure among staffers and viewers because of his close control over broadcasts. So far, more than 58,000 people signed a Change.org petition to have him removed, saying, “Ali Javanmardi’s biased approach silences the Iranian struggle and betrays the trust of those who depend on honest journalism.”

In an email, a U.S. Agency for Global Media spokesman defended the new policy regarding opposition figures. “Mr. Reza Pahlavi himself, as well as the leaders of other political groups, have been invited to speak on the Voice of America,” he said.

Despite the invitation, Pahlavi has not appeared on the network. Pahlavi did not respond to a request for comment.

Several VOA staffers working on the broadcasts, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, said that Javanmardi appeared to target Pahlavi. The staffers said he personally approves all guests before they appear on air and has instructed staff not to book anyone who sympathizes or promotes Pahlavi.

“He completely censors his name, his activity and everything,” one staffer said, noting that Javanmardi has refused to play audio of protesters in Iran shouting Pahlavi’s name. “All the people chanting in Iran — nothing. He censors everything.”

Holly Dagres, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute who writes a Substack newsletter called “The Iranist,” said that many Iranians have indeed chanted Pahlavi’s name during the protests. “While this may seem surprising to outside observers, nostalgia for the pre-1979 era has grown in recent years,” she said. “Many Iranians — particularly Gen Zers who weren’t alive during that period — perceive life before the revolution as a better time.”

She added that omitting this detail “erases a key element of the uprising — including the motivations of some of the protesters who have risked, and in some cases lost, their lives in the name of freedom.”

Another staffer said that no pro-Pahlavi content can appear on the network. “If anything ever has been published or broadcast, it’s because we missed it,” the staffer said.

Another employee said that the approach has hampered reporting, such as when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) met with Pahlavi and Javanmardi instructed the staff not to cover it.

However, one VOA staffer defended the policy, saying that without it, the service and the United States could be labeled having interfered in Iran’s internal affairs.

And Arash Azizi, a lecturer at Yale University who writes about Iran for different publications, also said he is “at least partially favorable” to VOA’s approach because Pahlavi leads “one political faction” of the opposition.

“No country in the world should recognize Mr. Pahlavi as the leader of the Iranian opposition because he has absolutely no legitimacy for that position,” Azizi said. “I think it’s good for VOA to have effectively pulled the brake and say, look, you’re nobody’s leader. You can’t just appoint yourself the leader and then expect us to treat you as one.”

Navid Mohebbi, a former political prisoner in Iran now advising the National Union for Democracy in Iran (NUFDI), which supports Pahlavi, said in a statement that VOA is effectively the “only major Persian-language diaspora outlet” that has avoided covering Pahlavi’s calls for demonstrations in Iran and protesters shouting pro-Pahlavi slogans.

“This level of censorship is striking, particularly when even Iranian regime media and outlets hostile to the United States acknowledged the existence of these slogans,” he said.

For Tahvili, who grew up watching VOA in Iran, the experience of being banned from the network was painful.

“For us, for my generation, we grew up with the Voice of America,” she said. “It was the only channel, the only Persian-language news source that we had at that time. Freedom of speech. Professional journalism. It really hurts to see how it changed from that to this.”

BUCHA, Ukraine — From her wooden schoolroom seat, Katya, 15, carefully eyes the assault rifles laid across the desks up front.

Her mind flashes to the Russian checkpoint four years ago.

She is crammed in the back of a neighbor’s car clutching her aunt’s cat as fear rises to her throat. Russian soldiers are pressed up against the car window, seething with anger, fingers on the triggers of their black guns.

The teacher’s voice snaps her back to the present.

“God willing, none of you will ever need the knowledge you gain here, not even once. But if, God forbid, it happens that you do need it — that you cross paths with these situations — it’s better that you know what needs to be done at any given moment,” he says. “Understood?”

Katya nods. She looks again at the training guns. She isn’t scared anymore. Scared is for 11-year-old Katya in the back seat of that car. Scared is for the little girl trembling in the basement, whose mother covered her with her body while Russian war planes circled overhead.

If Russian troops ever return to Bucha, Katya doesn’t want to be scared. She intends to be ready.

The teacher asks for volunteers to try loading a rifle. Katya’s hand shoots up.

As Russia’s full-scale invasion entered its fifth year Tuesday, Ukrainians were yearning for peace but also readying a new generation of defenders — a somber recognition that the Kremlin is still bombing civilians every night and pushing maximalist demands at the negotiating table. The war could go on for years, and even if a ceasefire is achieved, the Russian threat will live next door.

Katya and her classmates have come of age during wartime.

In 2022, as tweens, they survived Russian occupation, made harrowing escapes from the front lines, and returned to find the bloodstained suburb of Bucha forever changed by the Russian massacre that unfolded on its streets in the first weeks of the war.

Now 15 and 16, they are still too young to enlist to fight but old enough to understand they soon may be called upon to join their parents and older siblings in protecting their country from a nuclear-armed neighbor intent on denying them an independent future.

While the United States escalates pressure on Kyiv to agree to a negotiated settlement, Ukraine is insisting on ironclad security guarantees — while preparing society to defend itself long term. That includes intensifying efforts to train its children on wartime readiness.

In classrooms across Ukraine, more than 385,000 teenagers are enrolled in a revamped, mandatory course on handling weapons, battlefield tactics, emergency medicine, mine safety, radio communication, and how to respond to attacks on energy infrastructure.

The course, called Protecting Ukraine, replaced a decades-old program that taught high-schoolers some basic weapons awareness but was largely a relic of the Soviet era that also involved dry lectures on military hierarchy and learning to march.

That curriculum was developed long before school hallways were adorned with photos of students and teachers killed by Russia, before air alerts sent children scrambling into basements, before sandbags lined school windows to protect them from blasts or classes were held in subways.

Ukraine’s Education Ministry invested $2.3 million in training teachers on the Protecting Ukraine program last year. “Our task was to form a defense mentality,” Education Minister Oksen Lisovyi said. “The need appeared, first of all of course, because of the military confrontation, terrorist threats and because Russia systematically terrorizes the civilian population.”

Students learn “how to protect one’s self, how to protect those who are close to you, how the Ukrainian army works, which role you could find for yourself if you’d choose to take that path,” Lisovyi said. “But first of all, of course, it’s about the preparation of the civilian population.”

Rifles, tourniquets, and CPR

Most students in Katya’s classroom were in or near Bucha when Russian forces rampaged the Kyiv region in 2022, executing civilians before retreating from their failed campaign to seize the capital.

When the instructor tells the students just how quickly a green, or safe, zone can turn red, they know exactly what he means.

Katya shivered in a basement, replaying the happiest moments of her life as explosions shook her neighborhood.

Zhenya walked miles along the railway tracks to reach Ukrainian-controlled territory as Russian warplanes circled overhead.

A shell struck the eighth floor of Kyrylo’s apartment building but didn’t explode.

Vasylisa remembers fleeing her hometown in the eastern Donetsk region as a toddler, only to resettle outside Kyiv and watch the sky turn red as streets burned in 2022.

The instructor runs through the basics of trauma medicine: different kinds of tourniquets, how to put pressure on a major wound. He describes types of land mines, explains why radios are still used in an age of phones. He asks for volunteers for a CPR lesson. Katya and Vasylisa step to the front of the room. They giggle as Vasylisa lies down and Katya tips her chin back, opens her mouth, checking for obstruction.

The students tie tourniquets to one another’s arms and practice twisting until they’re so tight they hurt. They remind each other to write down the time. They know that a tourniquet left on too long can lead to amputation.

When they go to load rifles, Katya is confident. She shows the other girls how it’s done while a group of boys plays with their phones in the back. Other students race to see who can load bullets into a magazine fastest.

“I’m going to be dreaming about this already,” Katya says. Her friend Ria chimes in: “Like this, Katya: You wake up and we’re assembling a rifle on your bed!” The girls laugh. Their friend Varvara Koval takes a turn. Katya corrects her approach, takes the magazine and attaches it herself.

The girls know that in schools in Russia, children their age are learning the same techniques. They know those kids are being taught that Ukraine is the aggressor, that Russia is liberating their territory by destroying it. They know that boys just a few years older than their classmates are being fitted for uniforms, crossing the border, killing Ukrainians and dying on Ukrainian land.

“While they are being taught how to properly plant mines, we are being taught how not to step on them,” Katya says of how she pictures Russian students. In a better world, she acknowledged, it would not be normal to load an assault rifle at school or tie a tourniquet on your friend’s arm.

“If no one were attacking our territory, or if Russia followed all the rules and conventions of conducting war, maybe we wouldn’t be learning this,” she adds. “But since they are striking civilian children just like us, we have to know all of this.”

Lost childhood

Katya grew up in this school. Her mom is a teacher here. She knows Bucha like the back of her hand. Vasylisa was never supposed to be here. Born in the eastern Donetsk region, she always dreamed of graduating from the same school as her father. War pushed her family out in 2014. They moved again and again, eventually settling in Irpin, just outside Kyiv.

On Feb. 23, 2022, as Russian forces massed on Ukraine’s borders, Vasylisa’s dad told her and her younger sister, Stasia, to prepare for the worst. Stasia, who was 9, burst out laughing.

The next morning, Russia invaded. Little information trickled in through their unstable internet connection, and what did was terrible: executions. Whole families shot as they tried to flee. Just across the field from them, they could hear a Ukrainian machine gun picking off Russian troops.

In early March, they fled, packing their dog, guinea pig and several neighbors into their car. The girls thought they were taking a so-called “green corridor” — a safe path toward Kyiv. Their parents knew no such route existed. The trip was a dangerous leap of faith.

Everything seemed to be on fire. They passed the mayor of Irpin hanging out of a car, a rifle in his hands. They eventually made it west, where their dad was quickly drafted to the military. The girls and their mom were stunned.

Back then, Vasylisa thought of the military almost as an extracurricular activity — something to do after school or work. “And now he was taken away, and there was a war,” she said. “I was afraid that … well, I was afraid for Dad. I was crying, talking to him, and he was trying to calm me down, but that only made me cry more.”

Eventually, the family settled into a new rhythm. They returned to the Kyiv region and moved to Bucha, where their dad is now based. Not everything Vasylisa is learning about war in school is new. Her dad taught her and Stasia some field medicine and asked them to always carry tourniquets when they go out. Last summer, they attended a camp where they practiced shooting.

Stasia, at 12, can already assemble and disassemble an AK M-479 in less than a minute.

“I get really upset when I realize that my teenage years are just slipping away like this and passing,” Vasylisa said through tears. “I’m now looking at my sister, who is 12 — the age I was then. And when I realize that she already feels kind of grown up, it makes me sad that I lost some years.”

Their dad has seen Russia’s war come to his family home twice. His daughters, he said, might still be children. But in an emergency, they should be ready to act as adults.

Sounds of war

At school, the military lesson ends in the early afternoon. The class disperses, and the students zip up their backpacks, push past the younger kids through the hallways. Vasylisa goes to an English class. The other girls gather on the steps outside.

The first stop after school is the grocery store for cookies, candies, and tea. Varvara’s mom isn’t home from work yet, but she agreed the girls can hang out at their apartment so long as Varvara runs upstairs first to clean.

They kick their shoes off at the door and rush for the kitchen. They boil water. They crowd around the table. They hear an air raid siren and ignore it. They move to Varvara’s room, sit on her bed and floor. They don’t talk about guns or drones or soldiers or war. They talk about boys and girls and crushes and relationships.

They laugh at Varvara’s cat, Masha. Eventually, Ria picks up Varvara’s blue acoustic guitar and starts to strum. The girls quiet down. She begins to sing. They all join in.

When the song ends, they cheer and rush to hug her.

The air alert has stopped. For this moment, safe in Varvara’s room, they are just teenagers. They are young and happy and free. They could almost be anywhere.

But later that night, the sirens blare again. Russian missiles and drones soar overhead and crash into apartments and houses and a hospital and energy infrastructure. Four people are killed. Several children are wounded. Varvara moves from her bed to sleep on a bean bag in the hall. The girls all hope to survive another night, and meet in school again tomorrow.