While his children played a popular Russian card game called “Fool ” on a sand-flecked blanket, beside a razor-wire fence warning “Do Not Enter — Mines,” Sergei Sovyak reflected on what has become of his battered, seaside city. “These days, the war is happening on a kind of political chessboard,” said Mr. Sovyak, a metallurgist. “It has become a conflict in the mind. In reality, in everyday life, there is no war anymore.” There is no doubt that life has changed considerably in this rusting industrial port on the Sea of Azov. Earlier this year, a fierce separatist offensive , backed by Moscow, threatened to overrun the city and create a land bridge connecting Russia with the Crimean Peninsula […]