An hour before midnight on New Year’s Eve, the air in Protasiv Yar, a historic district on the edge of Kyiv’s city centre, was warm and still.
Not a soul could be seen. Lights were visible in apartment buildings, even those whose windows had been shattered earlier in the day when a Russian rocket was downed by Ukrainian air defences. But no sounds of cheer or New Year preparations could be heard.
The silence was broken only by an elderly woman climbing a nearby street, carrying a white plastic bag and sobbing quietly. She looked back at her home, damaged in the Russian rocket attack. She was going to live with her daughter for the time being, she told me.
