At the same time, the Dnipro is the greatest natural obstacle to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. From north to south, from the forests on the Belarusian border to the steppe on the Black Sea, it flows right through the middle of the country. Only briefly did the troops of Russian leader Vladimir Putin manage to cross the river, until they were forced to abandon the west bank again in the first year of the war. Since then, the Dnipro's lower reaches have marked the front line between Russian-occupied and free Ukraine. The river that forms Ukraine's backbone threatens to become a permanent border.

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A trip along the Dnipro is thus a journey through both the history and present of Ukraine. Together with photographer Emile Ducke and longtime DER SPIEGEL producer Fedir Petrov, I set out to search the riverbanks for Ukraine's identity – and for the scars of the war.

It is a journey that leads from light into darkness. It begins in Demydiv in the north, where Ukraine repelled Russia's advance on the capital in 2022. It leads through villages and towns where people wrest a peaceful everyday life from the war, with growing difficulty the closer the front gets. And it ends in the heart of darkness: in the port city of Kherson, where drones hunt pensioners and remote-controlled ground robots roll through empty streets.