Arriving at Lviv station in western Ukraine to catch the night train to Kyiv was like stepping back in time. It felt like Romania in 1989 before the Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown.
Or even – though I am imagining here - Berlin in early 1945 before the Soviets smashed their way into the city from the east.
I sat on a sturdy but ancient curved wooden chair in a barely-lit waiting hall. Near me three men in uniform holding automatic rifles were standing about and yawning.
There was very little bustle or even chat, and when I ascended into the cavernous covered area where the platforms were the lights were so dim that other passengers seemed to emerge out of the dark only a few feet away.
In a stark reminder of the truncated state of the country I had arrived in that day an old departures board was still showing Mariupol and other cities that are now under the Russian yoke.
A few minutes later the train pulled in – it had come from the western city of Uzhgorod beyond the Carpathians. But there were no numbers on the waggons.
I enquired frantically in Russian – I had been warned not to use the language in this most patriotic of Ukrainian towns but such sensitivities went out the window as I contemplated a night in the spooky station – and eventually I was allowed aboard and shown to my bunk.
The middle-aged woman opposite me, a Kyiv native, had spent the last several months in the UK and was now heading back to the Ukrainian capital.
Welcomed under the Homes for Ukraine programme into a small English village, she had watched as the thermostat in the house she was staying in was turned down and then turned down again.
“Finally they set it to 15 degrees and left it there,” she said. “I know they were trying to save money but for all the water bottles I used I just couldn’t keep warm. I decided life back in Kyiv had to be better.”
At 8.30am the next day we pulled into Kyiv and I stepped out into a blustery misty morning.
I have spent, in total, many months in Kyiv.
As the Moscow Correspondent for the Daily Telegraph in the 2000s I covered the Orange Revolution – when a group of pro-western politicians, backed by hundreds of thousands of demonstrators forced the Russophile leadership of the country to annul the results of an election they had stolen.
When the vote was rerun Moscow’s man, Viktor Yanukovych, lost his job. But not too many years later he was back again after the leaders of the pro-western camp squabbled among themselves.
Ukraine tilted this way and then that until the 2014 Euromaidan, a series of first-peaceful-later-violent protests that culminated in the killing by security forces of nearly 100 demonstrators which brought an end to pro-Moscow government in Ukraine.
Within weeks Vladimir Putin, furious at what he saw as betrayal by Kyiv and western meddling, sent special forces to seize control of the Crimean peninsular. His troops and agents also flooded into areas of eastern Ukraine where pro-Moscow sentiment was highest.
War broke out, and over the next eight years thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and separatist fighters were killed in combat.
In 2017, three years after that war began, I once again visited the country. There were military displays in Kyiv and much patriotic talk. But the fighting seemed far away and café and restaurant life in the capital was as vibrant as ever.
In early 2022, on the eve of the latest and most bloody war, I returned. But even then the mood was fairly upbeat, if a little nervous.
But as I walked the streets this week I realised that something had changed.
On the face of it, the city was still working as it should have been. In an elite shopping centre smart brands that would be at home in London’s Bond Street were still for sale: Bally, Hugo Boss and Karl Lagerfeld.
Cars were still driving around as normal, traffic lights were functioning, and small kiosks still sold Belgian fries and Italian coffees. I even managed to order an avocado smoothie made with coconut milk, as much for the idea as for the taste.
But there were also metal tank traps piled up on pavements and in the main shopping street, Khreshchatyk, a huge canvas praised the defenders of Mariupol, the southern port city that was decimated by Russia’s big guns early in the war.
But more than anything else what was missing was the people.
In the shopping malls there were barely enough patrons to justify keeping the doors open. In English Home, a shop selling soft furnishings and household tat, even a 70% sale was failing to bring in the punters.
At the Bessarabian Market, where old ladies were selling fruit, different kinds of salami, brightly-coloured pickles and piles of orange caviar, I was the only customer. They heckled me as I walked through the deserted aisles.
I asked one of the vendors how business was.
“It’s awful,” she said. “It’s been like this all winter and last summer wasn’t much better. Everyone has either run away to Europe or been drafted. This war….”
With a trip to eastern Ukraine planned for the following day I stocked up on provisions: a stick of pony meat and another of venison – not my usual go-tos when travelling but what was on offer. I added half a kilo of sugared ginger I bought from an Uzbek trader.
Heading home I reflected on how many western flags were hanging in Kyiv. Russia may have created a narrative that the whole world is against it (and, falsely, that it has been thus throughout its history) but Ukraine is playing heavily on western solidarity.
With the Russians now gearing up for a spring offensive, which could involve hundreds of thousands of men, Kyiv needs the west, and its military hardware, more than ever.
The relatively easy victories of the autumn seem to be over – both in the north and the south Kyiv clawed back large swathes of land against poorly-defended Russian positions – and the next phase of the war looks set to be more bloody still.
“I have decided to return and stay in Kyiv – it’s my home,” the woman on the night train said to me. “But thank you for coming to my country. Without the west we really have no hope.”
NEWS & UPCOMING
+ After Kyiv I head for Dnipro in central Ukraine where a Russian missile crashed into an apartment block last weekend, killing 46. After that I will head further east.
+ I expect to publish a piece every few days on my reporting in Ukraine. Most posts will be for paid subscribers only.
Please stay safe. We expect to see you this spring or summer.