For the past two and a half years, Kateryna Bairachna has wanted to meet someone special. But war always gets in the way.
Ms. Bairachna met a soldier, but then he was sent to the front. She traded text messages with another man, but those fizzled out because he was in no mood to meet, fearing he might soon be drafted. On the dating app Bumble, Ms. Bairachna liked the looks of a hipster. But when she scrolled through his photographs, she noticed his amputated leg.
“I looked at his profile for 15 minutes and felt so sorry for him,” Ms. Bairachna, 35, a marketing director for a clothing brand in Kyiv, said in an interview. She wondered if she could handle a relationship with a maimed war veteran. Then she swiped left, removing him from potential matches. “I feel I’m not ready for that.”