'Putin's not worth talking about – there will be victory for Ukraine over Russia this year

Few sounds will make your blood run truly cold but the sorrowful wail of an air raid siren is one of them. I first heard the chilling, oscillating tones of the alert in Lviv a week ago, on Valentine’s Day, as I visited the western Ukrainian city with Save The Children to learn about the impact of Russia’s two-year-old invasion on civilians.

Yet nobody flinched in the meeting room of the government building I sat in. Not a single person moved. The threat was minor, it transpired, linked to a routine training flight.

And shortly afterwards I emerged into the bright afternoon sunshine, joining the throngs of people strolling Lviv’s quaint streets as a second siren signalled the all-clear.

But being jolted awake at 5am the next morning was different.

The previous evening – somewhere between the time I was eating a tasty beef pie in the medieval-themed 5th Dungeon restaurant and a traditional Lviv cheesecake in a late-night chocolate cafe – Ukrainian drones were attacking a Russian landing ship off the coast of Crimea. Ukraine’s military released video showing the Caesar Kunikov riddled with shots before it sank, while the Kremlin seethed in silence.

Its brutal response came the next day. In the early hours of dawn, Russian forces launched 26 missile attacks across seven Ukrainian regions, including Lviv.

Ukraine’s air force shot down 13 of them but at least 11 people were injured, with schools and a kindergarten among the residential and commercial buildings hit, including on the outskirts of Lviv.

“Attention… Air Raid Alert… Proceed To The Nearest Shelter… Don’t Be Careless… Overconfidence Is Your Weakness,” blared throughout my hotel’s speakers.

I didn’t hesitate. Within five minutes I was sitting in the basement. It was another 15 minutes before anyone joined me.

Ukrainians are weary of war. Numbed to the constant blare of air raid warnings at nighttime, people often choose to stay in bed in their high-rise apartments instead of scurrying to shelters.

Situated so far west, Lviv has been largely spared from Russian shelling compared with Ukraine’s other cities – its ornate baroque architecture and Gothic Catholic churches mostly untouched, their domes visible from afar. Dating back to the Middle Ages, Lviv is known as Leopolis, or the city of Lions, named after a 13th-century king’s son, Lev.

Its castle, located above the city, is closed to visitors for the foreseeable future.

But Lviv is a pleasing mix of old and new. During my stay, trams squealed around corners as cars sat bumper to bumper in traffic, a congested scene typical of any urban rush hour. Cyclists wearing bright green “Bolt” food backpacks – Ukraine’s equivalent of Deliveroo – zoomed past Valentine shop displays. Women sold balloons and flowers. A surprisingly large number of men walked the streets.

But looking more closely, the scars of war were easy to find. Less than 15 minutes’ drive southeast of the city lies the Field of Mars, a military cemetery that borders the city’s main burial ground.

The Field of Mars has been compared with the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, the final resting place of World War One veterans and celebrities. And the mood here is just as solemn. In the bitter cold, relatives visit the graves of lost husbands, sons and brothers, killed in combat. Rows of brown crosses, bearing the names and pictures grav son bth of slain soldiers, stretch into the distance, commemorated with flowers and Ukrainian flags. Ukraine does not disclose its military death toll. A US estimate last year put it as high as 70,000, although some local politicians have dismissed this.

Regardless, the area assigned for military burials has filled up. And there are more graves than may be known. On the train between Lviv and the Polish border I spotted two close to the track as I glanced out the window. The headstones jutted prominently from the flat fields and barren trees.

Back in the city centre, Lviv has taken care to protect its buildings and monuments. Large metal sheets cover the elegant stained glass windows of the 14th-century cathedral. Statues are wrapped in fireproof fabric and overlain with banners bearing the message: “We will enjoy the original after victory.”

With Germanic, Italian and Polish architectural influences, Lviv was listed as a Unesco World Heritage site in 1998. More recently the cultural body’s committee added the city, along with Ukraine’s capital Kviv, to its list of global cultural sites “in danger”.

As I wandered about the square, I saw noticeboards with the faces and stories of dead soldiers. One shop window had a run- ning count of Russian soldiers killed. It was here I encountered ordinary Ukrainians.

Lviv couple Vitalii and Yuliia, both 26, run four beauty salons in the city. They were surprisingly upbeat, even as news reports circulated of Russian troops advancing on another Ukrainian city, this time Avdiivka in Donetsk Oblast in the east.

“We have felt energised from the start and there hasn’t been a time when we felt down,” said Vitalii. “We still anticipate success but success is also now, as the economy is still alive and we can make money. But we feel the responsibility of looking after our employees so they can feed their families. A lot of the people we employ come from Kharkiv.”

Another resident, Lyudmila, 68, had to leave Crimea in 2014 when Putin’s forces invaded. She lived in the Black Sea port city of Odesa for five years, forced to flee there after air strikes rained down. Now she lives in Lviv with her adult son – her daughter is in Italy.

She said: “The war is terrible, it is terrifying. I feel so sorry for all the people.”

Asked what she thought of Putin, she replied: “I do not want to think about him. He is not worth talking or thinking about.” Yet, like every other Ukrainian I spoke to, Lyudmila was confident the country would prevail. “I believe there will be a victory for Ukraine in 2025,” she said. “We need more missiles from the US and Europe. When we have the weapons, victory will come as well.”

Svitlana, 52, originally from Ivano-Frankivsk, a city south of Lviv, was visiting her family. With no pension, she sold milk from her two cows to make ends meet. On this day it was floral headbands. “It is a sad time and things are very difficult,” she told me. “We do not want people to die any more because this year has exterminated the best people in Ukraine.

“We hope victory will come soon. We are very thankful to all the countries who have helped. I don’t think we would have made it without your support.”

While public support for President Volodymyr Zelensky and his government at home and abroad is robust, soldiers are exhausted and morale is low in parts of the front line. It is illegal for Ukrainian troops to desert their posts but thousands have done so. Others are attempting to dodge the draft to replace the depleted ranks.

Just two weeks ago President Zelensky fired Ukraine’s top army commander General Valerii Zaluzhnyi after, observers say, disagreeing with his call for mass mobilisation.

Tensions between them had run high for months but the sacking was viewed as a difficult decision given Zaluzhnyi’s good approval ratings. He’s been replaced by General Oleksandr Syrskyi, who led a successful counteroffensive in Kharkiv in September 2022, yet some Ukrainian soldiers regard him as ru sa de ap re Sy co Se Uk reckless with their lives. Back in Lviv, newspaper stall holder Olexander, 68 – wrapped in a Ukrainian flag – was in a defiant mood. “It is not two years of war, it’s 10 years because the war started in 2014,” he said.

On his stall he has sold household goods celebrating Ukrainian independence since the Soviet Union’s fall in 1989. That afternoon he’d sold 15 toilet rolls bearing Putin’s image and six doormats that asked people to “wipe your feet” on the autocrat’s face.

Olexander had this message for Britain and its allies: “Boris Johnson helped us a lot and so has your current prime minister [Rishi Sunak]. But we need to defeat Russia.

“There is no other way, only victory. Our neighbour [Russia] is not very kind and a bit mad. Please support us.”

His words were utmost in my mind as I made my way to my scheduled train on Thursday morning, a second air siren signalling the whole clear. Men holding guns greeted our arrival at the station.

With the ticket hall closed for safety, people huddled in the tunnel under the platforms in the freezing cold until their trains arrived. Standing next to me was a family of four – two young girls drinking juice from bottles and shivering in their coats.

One was crying. Printed on to her pink backpack were three Disney princesses, an enduring symbol of youth.

A grave reminder that it is always the innocent who suffer most in war.