The night train to Kyiv

After several months in the UK, the lady sleeping on the opposite bunk on the night train to Kyiv told me she had had enough.

Welcomed under the Homes for Ukraine scheme into a small English village, she had watched as the thermostat in the house was turned down and then turned down again.

‘Finally they set it to 15 degrees’, 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.’

An hour before our conversation I had arrived at Lviv station in western Ukraine. I sat on an ancient curved wooden chair in a barely-lit waiting hall. Near me were three men in uniform holding Kalashnikov assault rifles. They were yawning. There were no health-and-safety announcements, very little bustle or even chat. When I ascended to the platforms the light was so low that other passengers seemed to emerge out of the dark only a few feet away. In a poignant reminder of the truncated state of the country, an old departures board was still showing ‘Mariupol’.

A few minutes later my train pulled in – it had come from the western city of Uzhgorod beyond the Carpathians. But there were no numbers on the wagons. I scrambled around enquiring frantically in Russian – though I had been warned not to use the language in this most patriotic of Ukrainian towns – and eventually was allowed on and shown to my bunk. At 8.30a.m. the next day the train pulled into Kyiv.

I have spent, in total, many months in Kyiv. As the Moscow Correspondent for the Telegraph in the 2000s I covered what became known as the Orange Revolution: a group of pro-western politicians, supported by hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, forced the Russophile leadership of the country to annul the results of a rigged election.

When the election was rerun Moscow’s man, Viktor Yanukovych, lost his job. But not too many years later he was back again after the pro-western camp squabbled.

It took the 2014 Euromaidan, a series of first-peaceful, later-violent protests that culminated in the killing of nearly 100 demonstrators to bring an end to pro-Moscow governance 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. Then his troops flooded into areas of eastern Ukraine. 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. But the fighting seemed far away when café and restaurant life in the capital was as vibrant as it was. Even in early 2022, only a few weeks before the latest and most bloody war began, the mood was fairly upbeat.

But now Kyiv is different. On the face of it, the city is still functioning. In an elite shop smart brands are still for sale: Bally, Hugo Boss and Karl Lagerfeld. Cars are still driving around and kiosks sell Belgian fries and Italian coffees. I even managed to order an avocado smoothie made with coconut milk.

There were also metal tank traps piled up on the pavement. Posters touted donors to the Ukrainian military campaign – Ford claims it has given 1,000 pick-up trucks. In the main street, Khreshchatyk, a huge canvas was being raised praising the defenders of Mariupol, the southern port city that was pulverised by Russia’s big guns early in the war.

There was something else missing: people. At the Belarussian Market, where old ladies were selling 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 and a gluten allergy that I knew would not serve me well in the sticks, I stocked up on provisions: a stick of pony meat and another of venison. I bought pickled gherkins, fresh raspberry jam, and a pound of sugared ginger from an Uzbek trader.

Heading home I noticed how many western flags were hanging in Kyiv. Just as Russia has created a narrative that the whole world is against it (and, falsely, that it has been thus throughout its history) so Ukraine is now counting on western solidarity.

With the Russians seemingly gearing up for a new spring offensive, which could involve hundreds of thousands of men, Kyiv calculates that its only real hope is if the West delivers it more military hardware. The relatively easy victories of the autumn seem to be over.

Nearly a year after the war began Britain is once again in the vanguard of the pro-Ukraine camp, and has pledged Kyiv 14 main battle tanks. The number is small but both London and Washington were hoping Germany would follow suit, or at least allow other countries to send the Dusseldorf-made Leopard 2 tanks to the frontlines. 

Those hopes, however, appear to be dashed, at least for now. On Friday Germany announced that it was not ready to authorise the move. Officials in Berlin said they felt the world was not ready to see German armour once again fighting Moscow’s armies in Ukraine. 

The Americans too are balking at the transfer of their tanks, which they say require too much maintenance and fuel to be operationally effective in Ukraine.

Poorly-heated though some of the homes might have been, at the beginning of the war Britain opened its arms to Ukrainians. It still leads the way in its support.