Children in puffy snowsuits waited patiently to board the ski lift, clutching their poles. Some families rode to the top just to breathe in the crisp mountain air and walk between the tall pines that framed the valley below.
Ski instructors in red onesies guided students down bunny slopes coated with snow churned out by machines, as the real stuff has been in short supply throughout Europe this winter. Teenagers let out delighted yelps as they slipped on the ice of a nearby skating rink.
It was almost easy to forget that this idyllic scene — at the Bukovel ski resort in the Carpathian Mountains in western Ukraine — was unfolding in a country at war, with pitched fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces playing out on front lines a few hundred miles away.