Over the past few months, Ukraine has been caught in geopolitical jostling at the highest echelons of power.

I'm sure to say that it is one of the most astonishing moments that we have ever seen happen inside the Oval Office between these world leaders, essentially shouting at one another.

A significant couple of statements from Vladimir Putin saying that Russia agrees with a Ukraine ceasefire.

With world leaders gathering for the papal funeral at the Vatican, a peace summit of sorts

for President Trump and Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Just this week, the Trump administration signed a deal to share revenues from Ukraine's mineral

wealth, tying the U.S. even more closely

to negotiations over the country's future. But these are political machinations. What about daily

life on the ground in Ukraine more than three years after the Russian invasion? Well,

Kiev, the capital, is bustling at least by day.

It's a city that's absolutely alive and full of creativity and resilience. There's wonderful coffee shops,

wonderful restaurants. You see people on the streets all the time during the day. People going to work,

kids going to school.

That's Joanna Kikisis, NPR's correspondent in Ukraine.

On weekends, I'll go to the theater.

We'll walk along the Nepro River.

You'll see these elderly couples dancing on the shore, like doing the waltz. And you think you think like this doesn't feel like a city at war.

But every night, practically there are drone attacks where you're like jarred awake by the fact like,

oh yeah, this is war. We're at war and it's happening practically every night.

Consider this. As diplomats tried to negotiate a peace deal, Ukrainian civilians are still dying

from Russian airstrikes. So today, for our reporter's notebook series, we'll get on the ground

with Joanna, who's been living and working in Ukraine for almost the entire war.

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