Stay or flee? Kyiv comes to terms with disaster of Russian invasion

The disaster unfurled itself on a grey, ordinary Thursday morning, sprinkled by rain. By 5am friends and loved ones were ringing each other, peering into their phones, making life and death decisions.

Amid this grandiose onslaught there were moments of normality. A few Kyiv residents emerged to walk their dogs. Queues formed outside cash machines. Most cafes were closed but Aroma Coffee had opened as usual, selling croissants and take-outs.

It was Mikhail Bulgakov in his masterful novel The White Guard, written almost a century ago, who dubbed Kyiv the City, with an upper case C. The City will endure. But it seems only a matter of time before it has new, harsher masters.