Day 1
Entry into Ukraine from Poland is remarkably simple. We take a local train bound for Przemysl, the closest border town — once provincial and unimportant — now a frontier to Europe’s battleground. We arrive at dusk and the town is filled with refugees fleeing from their homes on the frontline that are reduced to rubble in places that are filling the newspapers such as Donetsk, Odesa, Mariupol and Kharkiv. What’s noticeable is the fact that almost all the refugees are women and children. The men, anyone aged between 18 and 60, are not allowed by law to leave Ukraine; they must stay and fight. Not that many want to leave anyway, according to one of the women I spoke to. “My husband was a graphic designer. Now he is a fighter,” says Maria. “I lost everything. My house, my job, everything. My husband will kill Russians, that is all he can do.”
The Polish authorities and humanitarian organisations are taking care of the crowds. There are free meals and clothes, free sim cards and teddy bears for the children. As the train is unloaded, I get an overwhelming sense that this is a war unlike anything anyone has seen in generations.
Day 2
We arrive in Lviv early afternoon and the town feels strangely normal. The city centre is alive with people, albeit a noticeable absence of tourists. Church bells toll and the shops are open. The only real indication of conflict are the graffiti and signs around the city stating the call to arms of “Russian War ship, go F**k yourself”, and the fact that church windows and important statues are boarded and wrapped up. There’s a service on in the Dominican Church. “What do we pray for?” The worshipper frowns as if the question is pointless.
“We pray that Putin will die.” Ukrainians, as I discover, can be very blunt.
Day 3
We meet Alex Riabchyn, the former MP and deputy minister, who takes us on a tour of the city, starting with the National Art Gallery, which has become the country’s biggest aid depot.
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“It’s heartbreaking to see this happen to my own people. We are a country under siege by the Russians. They bomb our cities and kill our children to force a peace agreement on their conditions. They are not our brothers, they are worse than Nazis,” says Alex.
Among the bedraggled families warming themselves around fires inside old oil drums, young men are viewed with suspicion. I watch as a scruffy-looking man in his late twenties is dragged aside by an undercover officer dressed as a fellow refugee. He is questioned by police, and his bags searched. The Ukrainians use slang words as a sort of nationality verification. Only Ukrainians can say Balanitsa – a type of bread. Their Russian cousins can’t quite pronounce it properly, by all accounts. It’s a crude but effective way of rooting out saboteurs. The scruffy-looking man fails the test and is hauled off for interrogation. Alex arranges a ten-hour overnight train to Kyiv and we prepare for a journey to the frontline.
Day 4
Sleep was fitful as the guard kept checking in on us, and the heating was erratic. Outside a dusting of snow covered the flat brown landscape. The suburbs of Kyiv are foreboding — grey apartment blocks and factory buildings. Will this be the next Stalingrad?
Alex, our MP friend, makes some introductions, and we meet Igor, a commander in the Territorial Defence Force. He is a busy man but agrees to an interview on the move. We watch as he loads an armoured Toyota Landcruiser with stacks of Kevlar body armour and boxes of weapons. He opens up a crate to show me dozens of new PKM machineguns, still in their plastic wrapping. “Who are they from?” He smiles: “Santa Claus.”
In a waste ground outside a glum-looking residential suburb we watch a mixed gang of secret police and new recruits test firing their new weapons. Some of the men have military experience in Donbas, others are boys, barely out of school. One has the words “Victory or Valhalla” tattooed across his face and wears neo-Nazi insignia. A reminder of the grey areas surrounding the background of this war. “I am here to defend my homeland and kill Russians,” he tells me. His child-like eyes give away barely concealed trauma and fear.
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Day 5
We visit the children’s hospital where I meet a boy aged 12 called Vlodimyr, who was shot in his parents’ car by Russian soldiers as they approached a checkpoint near Irpin. He somehow survived the hail of bullets, although he still has a bullet lodged in his spine. His father wasn’t so lucky and died at the scene.
Taras, a local businessman who has also taken up arms against the invaders, shows us the neighbourhoods where Russian cruise missiles have destroyed residential apartment blocks. He drives us in his wife’s electric car — petrol is impossible to find now, he says, with a shake of his head. “And the supermarket shelves are empty. All Putin needs to do is cut off the supply chains and he could probably starve the city to surrender. But the Russians are pretty stupid. They are just parked up and we go and smash them. It’s a war of attrition.”
It’s getting dark but we are shown around a primary school. In the basement, in a classroom and dormitory, beds filled with teddy bears are surrounded by posters showing how to apply a tourniquet and assemble a machinegun. “These are not the lessons children should be taught,” the headteacher sighs.
Day 6
The air raid sounded throughout the night and none of us slept much. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one dreaming of Russian invaders. The distant thuds of incoming artillery suddenly felt not so distant, and I woke at 4am to an almighty explosion somewhere to the north. Taras insisted that we drive to the impact zone, so we travelled up to Obolon residential district to find that a missile had hit an apartment block, killing an unknown number of civilians. It was either a deliberate war crime or an incompetent bit of military activity.
As we leave, we hear on the news that the school we visited last night was also targeted. We visit a hospital in the city centre where soldiers injured in Irpin over the last days have been brought for surgery. We meet Illia, a former masseuse who was shot by shell fire on day one of the war. Despite having his shoulder held together by plates he managed to joke that he would offer us a free massage after the war.
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Day 7
We hear on the news that a 36-hour curfew is about to be imposed as the fighting in the suburbs intensifies. The government tell what remains of the civilian population to stay indoors. Everyone has six hours to either leave the city or stock up on food and water. I realise now that perhaps that was Putin’s plan all along — all he needs to do really is sit and wait. President Zelensky will have nowhere to run. Six weeks is all it will take. The future of Europe hangs in the balance as the tide of spring arrives. We leave in silence, a 30-hour journey across the plains and into Europe on a refugee evacuation train surrounded by women and children. I feel lucky that we are able to leave. Millions of others are not so fortunate.
