Shortly before my assignment in Kyiv ended, I began to think about the people I would leave behind to an uncertain fate. They included a mother and her 18-year-old daughter who shared our underground shelter. One morning, the daughter"s crying woke me up. She had got word that her father, who had been living near the Chernobyl nuclear plant, had apparently been harmed by a group of Russian soldiers. They had ransacked his house looking for cigarettes and alcohol. The teenager feared the worst.