Notebook entries found in Kharkiv reflect the bleak outlook of Russian forces for the war in Ukraine. In September, Ukrainian troops won back most of Kharkiv, forcing the Russians to retreat. A soldier mentally imagined a vacation with his family in late 2023 as reality set in.

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A Russian soldier wrote a diary about his future self and his family, envisioning an eventual break from war during the height of Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the northeast. The unnamed soldier’s notebook entries were found in a notebook recovered from an abandoned Russian base in Kharkiv after Russian troops withdrew from most of the region in September, Reuters reported. Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive in northeastern Kharkiv began in late summer and intensified in early September. By mid-September, towns such as Balakliia and Izium had been liberated, and the Russian leadership announced that it was withdrawing from almost all of the Kharkov region, moving troops elsewhere. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that within days of the September counteroffensive, Ukraine had recaptured more than 1,158 square miles of territory from Russian forces. In other documents obtained by Reuters, soldiers contacted their superiors, urgently requesting basic ammunition and drones. As Ukrainian troops relied on US HIMARS missile launchers, Russian troops in Balakliia, Kharkiv, were out of weapons — and out of morale, according to diary entries published by Reuters. “If you sit and look at the river long enough, you will eventually see your enemies floating,” the unnamed soldier wrote in the notebook, referring to the surrounded Ukrainian troops at the time. Another entry in the anonymous soldier’s notebook reflected a long-term perspective on the war and an imagination of a different future. “I went home on August 10, 2023, I’m already home with my family,” the soldier wrote. “I’m having a great time in Khabarovsk with my family, my wife and my girls.”