The European Front

Europe is counting on Ukraine to buy it time to rearm and prepare its own armies. Ukrainians pay for that time with their lives while their partners weigh every decision, afraid of provoking Moscow. Meanwhile, Russia’s arms factories keep running, supplying the war against Ukraine and building up stockpiles of missiles, drones, and ammunition for a new offensive. The assumption that Ukraine will continue to hold Russia back while Europeans remain safe proves fatal. With its war against Ukraine still underway, Russia opens a new front. Now explosions wake people in NATO cities.

In Gdańsk, programmer Marek Kordek tries to save his family as a strike blows out the windows of his home. All he wanted was an ordinary life: to work, be with his wife, and watch his children grow up. Now, to protect that life, he must leave the people he loves most. Marek is called up, while Klara has to take the children out of a city where, until recently, they felt at home. She wants her husband with them. He cannot bear the thought of leaving while others defend his country. They love each other, but can no longer agree on what it means to save their family.

Now the front line separates them. Calls cut out, and the waiting never really ends, even after the words “I’m all right.” Marek keeps some of what he has been through from his family. At home, the children learn to read their mother’s face before asking about Dad. Around them, other families are breaking apart: fear drives people to flee, guilt makes them stay, and a decision made in minutes can separate loved ones for a long time.

The roads to the borders fill with people trying to escape the attacks. Military convoys move the other way: the allies are gathering forces to halt the offensive and retake the occupied cities. Whether reinforcements arrive in time determines who can still be evacuated. Those trapped on the other side of the front line risk their lives even when they venture out for medicine. Under occupation, a neighbor can settle an old grievance by informing on someone, while an armed stranger decides who gets to remain in their own home. Confiscated documents, hunger, and fear for their children become tools of coercion. People are forced to beg those they hate, stay silent about what they have endured, and agree to things that seemed unthinkable only yesterday.

Yet escaping the shelling does not undo everything the war has taken. After being gravely wounded, Marek struggles to become the husband and father he remembers being. He went to defend his family; now he cannot even reach the bathroom without help. His children see his helplessness, making their care still harder for him to accept. Klara can be there for him, but she cannot keep the war out of his dreams. She is exhausted too, needs support herself, and no longer has the strength to pretend the worst is over. They will have to speak openly about what they hid to spare each other pain, and ask for help they were once too ashamed to seek. If they cannot, the war may destroy what still holds them together.

While families struggle to stay together, governments debate how much longer the war can go on. The nuclear threat makes any promise of peace tempting. Moscow offers to return the territories it has seized from NATO countries in exchange for Ukrainian land. Those who relied on Ukrainian resistance now have a chance to save their own cities by handing Ukrainian cities over to Russia—even those it has failed to capture. Once again, diplomatic language obscures the people themselves: their homes, the loved ones they have lost, and their hope that no one will forgive these wrongs on their behalf. The peace everyone longs for may demand yet another sacrifice from them.

The European Front is a complete trilogy by Sam Nyxon about Russia’s war with NATO—a war that tears through the lives of ordinary people.