As great powers debate Russia’s place in the world, its role in eastern Ukraine’s 2-1/2-year-old war, and the Minsk peace process to end it, ordinary people living along the front line in eastern Ukraine are just as worried about many of the local leaders’ Soviet-style habits of governance, corruption and patronage.
The small front-line town in eastern Ukraine is called Schastia, or Ukrainian for “Happiness”.
Four grandmothers sit outside in the…