Devastation and defiance in Ukraine: 100 days of a war that is reshaping Europe

It was just hours until the first missiles would land. The last day of an era in Europe. On the evening of 23 February, the world braced.

And the end of an idea. That trade and prosperity could dissolve old European rivalries. That access to iPhones, Instagram and Ikea furniture could cool the chauvinist impulses that had fuelled centuries of bloody history.

In spite of unusually specific warnings from the US government of an imminent invasion, and the buildup of forces in Russia and Belarus, Ukrainians were not panicking. There were no queues at the western borders. The cafes and bars of Kyiv had been packed the previous Saturday evening. People continued making plans for holidays, dates, and swimming lessons for their children.

Many analysts concurred. The Russian forces massing on the border were too few to occupy the country, they argued. State media had done little to prepare the Russian public for war. An invasion would trigger economic penalties so ruinous to the Russian economy that no leader would dare risk it.

All of this was true, and they were wrong.

Over the course of a chaotic day, Russian troops and military vehicles are reported to have come within 18 miles of the capital; to have swept through Chornobyl and taken workers there hostage; to have pushed into eastern towns such as Sumy; and to have rained missiles on port cities across the Black Sea. Russian hit squads are searching for the Ukrainian president and gunfire is heard near the presidential compound. There is a feeling of doom in Kyiv and around the world.

After four hours, he gets up and takes his place on guard duty.

Mario Draghi, the Italian prime minister, tells parliament that Zelenskiy has missed a scheduled call that morning, pausing as his voice falters. The chamber fills the silence with spontaneous applause.

Europe is uniting in revulsion and solidarity, imposing new sanctions, debating whether to excise Moscow from the Swift payments system. Russia is expelled from the Eurovision song contest.

The family get to work building makeshift barricades around their neighbourhood to slow oncoming tanks or armoured vehicles. They make contact with other men in the area and form a local defence unit. Ksienich is handed a Kalashnikov rifle several decades older than he is.

That night, during a pause in the shelling, the Ukrainian president resurfaces. He posts a 32-second video, shot on the streets of Kyiv himself.

Kyrylo Demchenko, a history student from Dnipro, joins the rush of young men signing contracts to enlist in the Ukrainian army. He is immediately handed a gun and sent to a highway at the edge of the capital.

It is 3am, in a forest on the outskirts of Kyiv. Ksienich and a small unit of volunteers sit in silence, waiting for the telltale crack of a tree branch under a boot, or the rumble of a helicopter.

Roads to the west of the country are choked with traffic and more than 300,000 Ukrainians have already fled the country. They are virtually all women and children; martial law has been instituted and men between 18 and 60 are banned from leaving. Across the country, families, friends and lovers are being divided, some for ever.

Four days in, Ukraine appears to have absorbed the initial Russian blow. Zelenskiy is still alive and in control of the government. Russian forces are uncoordinated, unable to take control of the airspace and running out of fuel and food. Hostomel airport, outside Kyiv, is the site of fierce fighting, preventing Russia from using it as a bridgehead into the capital.

In Bucha, a commuter town near Kyiv, an invading Russian column is devastated by Ukrainian artillery and retreats. But the soldiers return after a few hours, occupy local homes and dig in.

In Mariupol, another disaster is taking shape. Hundreds of civilians have already died in shelling since the beginning of the war. The city is surrounded and its mayor, Vadym Boichenko, announces remaining residents no longer have heat, running water or electricity.

The number of Ukrainians who have fled their country passes 2 million, in the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since the second world war.

By the end of the day, the figures have been removed from the story (the newspaper claims it was hacked) but its scale echoes what observers are seeing on the ground. The Russian campaign is indecisive, bogged down and pursuing too many targets at once.

The pain of this misadventure is starting to be felt around the world. Egypt, which imports 80% of its grain from Russia and Ukraine, fixes the cost of bread in response to a surge in prices. The soaring cost of fuel compounds a severe currency crisis in Sri Lanka. The price of cooking oils, cereals and meats are on their way to the highest levels recorded by the United Nations since it started tracking in 1990.

It is accompanied by photographs and video footage documenting the streets of Bucha, a satellite city on the outskirts of the capital. They are scenes from hell: crushed neighbourhoods, bound corpses strewn in the roads and bodies hastily buried in the front yards of their homes. In a cellar, authorities find the body of a woman dressed in a fur coat and nothing else, and torn condom wrappers on the floor above.

Over the coming days, journalists reach further-flung villages and find similar horrors. In Trostianets, near the Russian border, there is evidence of summary executions and torture. In the village of Staryi Bykiv, 50 miles east of Kyiv, Russian soldiers killed at least nine civilians. From homes in Novyi Bykiv, a settlement just across a river, they looted items including jewellery, a scooter, computers and from one house, a novelty cushion, in an orgy of looting so widespread across areas occupied by the Russians that it appears to be a systematic part of military culture.

Obscured by the grisly discoveries is a significant deadline: Friday was the end of the one-year term of tens of thousand of Russian conscripts, who are permitted to leave the army, despite rumours the Kremlin might seek ways to keep them in its ranks and bolster the invasion force.

Germany, whose economic model is built in part on cheap Russian gas, is weathering diplomatic pressure to impose an outright ban on imports, calls that have grown more urgent since the discovery of war crimes in Bucha and elsewhere.

Kyiv has surprised the world and repelled the invaders, but success is bittersweet. So many have been killed or are still fighting, Ksienich says, while people in the capital begin to resume normal lives.

As the fighting in the east settles into a grinding war of attrition, the puppet leadership of Kherson, captured by Russia early in the fighting, say they plan to seek annexation by Moscow, giving a hint of a possible future for other cities and towns seized by Russian forces. Across the occupied region, Russia has reportedly disappeared mayors, journalists and artists as it seeks to tighten its grip. In some areas it will soon introduce the rouble as an official currency and offer fast-tracked Russian passports to residents.

The US and its Nato allies have walked a careful line so far, seeking to funnel weapons and aid to Ukraine without provoking Russia into widening the war beyond its borders. In recent weeks, sensing an opportunity to trap Russia in a quagmire, western powers are pushing that line further.

With fighting now largely confined to the east, more than 1 million Ukrainian refugees have returned home, the government says. More than 5 million remain abroad in the largest displacement crisis of the 21st century.

Russia is learning the lessons of its disastrous invasion. It has broken into Sievierodonetsk, the last major population centre in Luhansk province outside its control, by concentrating forces that earlier in the war it had spread thinly. Elsewhere in the east and south, it is digging in, fortifying its positions.

Ksienich spends his days ferrying tools and summer clothes to friends fighting in the east. In the spare hours, he works his old job in Warsaw remotely. He makes his life in a void between war and peace.

Demchenko, the young historian, has become the sergeant of a logistics unit stationed near Kharkiv. He and his men sleep in muddy trenches and, when they are lucky, on the floor of farmhouses. He shrugs off the danger and discomfort.

These difficult days are charged with a potent force, he says, a forging process he had only studied before in books.