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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: One of our WORLD correspondents returned to Ukraine about a week ago. Lindsay Mast connected with him and wanted to bring him back on to find out how things have changed since he was last there.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Thanks, Mary and Myrna.

Longtime listeners may recall Caleb Welde’s reports from Ukraine in 2025. He returned just over a week ago to the capital city of Kyiv, so I called him up to find out what he’s seeing there.

Caleb, good morning.

CALEB WELDE: Good morning.

MAST: Caleb, you were last in Ukraine at the end of last year. Can you compare what it was like then to what you've experienced since being back?

WELDE: The alarms are going off a lot more than they were when I was here last time. Last time it'd be, on average, three or four times a day. Now it's six, eight times easily. Yesterday they went off ten times during the day, and that counts all hours of the night as well.

So the other different thing is that there's much more missiles coming in than there were when I was here last. I'm in one of the nicest parts of the city right now, surrounded by embassies. There's a U.S. embassy building just a block from where I was staying. And at 3 a.m., a bunch of missiles came in, you know, close enough to where I just immediately, you know, asleep, but hit the floor and went into the bathroom, as that's the safest place. 

I'm told that people are taking the alarms a lot more seriously now. You know, before you used to have 30 minutes, an hour of notice where before the shahids reached the city. So you could gather your things, you could go to the the car park, the basement of your building, whatever you wanted to do, metro. But now you know those those missiles hit while the alarms are still going off, you know, maybe 45 seconds, a minute of warning. 

So now there's not time, you know, for people necessarily to get to safety.

MAST: I know you've been out on the streets. How does the damage compare to when you were there before?

WELDE: Well, most of my time has been in the center of the city, and I have to say I am surprised. 

I went to my favorite coffee shop for the first time a few days ago, which is in the very center of the city. If you've seen any picture of Kiev, you've probably seen in the central square, there's a large pillar with a statue of a woman on top, the Maidan Memorial. And this coffee shop is 200 yards from there. And I went, sat down in my normal spot, and the window was gone. And then I noticed the other windows were damaged, and they said that was around two months ago.

Sunday evening, I went to a concert, an open-air concert set in the middle of some really, really nice apartment buildings. And on the way in, there was clearly evidence of an explosion of some sort. And I talked to the security guard, he said, missile, 2 a.m., killed a man and a woman, sounds like a baby was injured. 

He was shaking with anger telling me about this. This is, you know, 200 yards from where this orchestra was practicing.

MAST: Do you see any signs of rebuilding at this point?

WELDE: I do. Just anecdotally, the church I'm going to is doing an addition. My landlord was showing me, you know, the apartment he's remodeling. People are definitely just continuing life here.

MAST: I know you said you had talked to people about the war, and you were, of course, talking to them when you were there before. When they talk about the war, how has that changed?

WELDE: That's, that, that's a difficult question. I, I asked the people I was talking to on the street last night, and I said, how many people do you know that have been killed in the war, you know, personally? And he said 10 close friends. He wanted to make sure that was clear, close friends, in his, you know, immediate circle. 

And then I was talking to three soldiers a few minutes later, and I asked them, and they said, the first guy said 10 close friends, and then the next guy said 25. He wanted to be clear, he said he's an instructor, and he wanted to be clear that's not counting, you know, soldiers that I've trained. 

And then the third guy said he didn't seem to want to answer. He said he's on a number of chats from the different military assignments he's done, group chats. And that, you know, when someone is killed, they post on those chats. But that he didn't, he said he tries not to check the chats because it's psychologically too difficult. 

And then I also asked a gal at a coffee shop this morning how many she knew that had died and she said around 25, counting like friends of her parents.

And I actually asked her, I said, what gives you hope? And she just looked at me with just a very flat look and said, "Well, to be honest I've tried to take my life three times recently." 

It didn't seem like she she had a lot of a lot of hope without Christ.

MAST: Caleb, last time you were there you had a piece of reporting that we ran where essentially people were going about their lives as sirens and warnings went off and that war was something that was coexisting with a somewhat regular life. 

How would you assess that now?

WELDE: I would say that's definitely still true. I mean, you know, like I said, the alarm's going off 10 times yesterday. It's too much, you know, to go to a shelter every time. But then there's also, you know, like that gal in the coffee shop, she said one of her coworkers' close friends was killed and she said another friend came really close to being killed, you know, by a rocket here in the city. 

So, yeah, I mean, everyone seems to be carrying on for sure,but it's just the new normal, I guess.

MAST: Caleb Welde joining us from Kiev. 

Caleb, thank you so much, and we're praying for your safety.

WELDE: Thank you so much, Lindsay. Good to talk to you.

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