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KIEV, Ukraine, Jan. 23 (UPI) -- For the outside world looking in, the conflict in Ukraine is about big picture issues: energy markets, the economy and fear of aggression from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But for the 46 million residents of the nation sandwiched between Russia and the European Union, increasing violence punctuates daily hardship.

Rolling blackouts, limited heat and hot water in winter's coldest months, increasing fares for public transportation and rising medical costs add to the struggles of average Ukrainians. Retail prices are up, with wages stagnant and jobs harder to come by.

Ukraine's recent troubles, sparked in March 2014 by Russia's annexation of Crimea, ended 20 years of post-Cold War peace.

"In 2014, we have, for the first time in many years, recalled our parents' toasting their post- Second World War peaceful life as the human being's consummate happiness," says Liudmyla Smotrytska, 73.

Born in Russia, Smotrytska has been living in Lviv, the largest city of western Ukraine, since the end of World War II.

Depicted by the Russian TV propaganda as the center of the "Ukrainian neo-Nazism," Lviv has given refuge to many Crimean Tatars, who fled after Russia moved in.

Later, as fighting in Ukraine's eastern regions has intensified, more Russian-speaking Ukrainians, whom Moscow was intending to protect, have fled their destroyed homes to seek shelter in safer places, such as the Ukrainian-speaking Lviv.

"Many people scared by the escalating violence in the eastern regions have been seeing Lviv as a serene harbor, but the situation seems to be deteriorating even here, in Ukraine's west," Smotrytska said.

The home of Lviv's mayor, Andriy Sadovyi, has been attacked twice. No one was injured.

Read more from the original source:
Ukraine's long, cold winter: Rising prices, escalating violence and Putin