I don’t buy “half of Ukraine” at all. They may have lived more or less normal lives, but, people in Ukraine outside of the war zone were still KEENLY aware and concerned about “the war in the East”, and not any less so than people in almost all of Russia. Over the 8 years there have been plenty of deaths and injuries of relatives, friends, friends of friends, etc., on the Ukrainian side, and many men are ex-vets and such, plus other civilian connections...
I only meant the zone of actual fighting or shelling. I was in Lviv a few years ago, they were obviously quite keenly aware of the fighting in the east.