Athboy native's photo diary from Kyiv - a city facing into a surreal summer of defiance

In the early hours of the first Sunday morning of June, Russian missiles hit targets in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv Ifor the first time in five weeks, where after over 100 days since the invasion on 24th February the city is beginning to return to a level of normality.

However, the city is no stranger to attacks and has shown resilience. During the initial invasion, Western military analysts predicted that Kyiv would fall within a matter of days as Russia shelled the outskirts of the city and tanks crushed oncoming cars.

There was an expectation that the world would witness Russian tanks enter Kyiv to depose Ukraine’s now globally admired president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and claim a decisive victory. Rather, the conflict took a very different turn as Ukrainians resisted the occupation and while the tanks did arrive in Kyiv, it wasn’t without irony.

The machinery arrived not in the condition that the Russian president had anticipated when he made his declaration of a “special military operation”, but rather destroyed, rusting and without any of its human operators – only their partially burned uniforms remain.

The Museum of the History of Ukraine and the Ministry of Internal Affairs placed the tanks next to the vibrantly blue Saint Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery not only to remind the Kremlin that the fate of the invaders has not been so bright but to boost the morale of Ukrainians who see this as evidence of an attainable David and Goliath victory for their country.

Due to poor planning and strategy, coupled with a well-motivated and well-supplied Ukrainian military, Russia failed in its objective to take the capital (and by extension, the entire country) and was forced to withdraw its forces from the majority of the central and northern regions that it once occupied.

Ukrainians are now adapting to life under the shadow of Moscow’s violence, learning to go about their lives while showing defiant support for their country’s efforts.

As the wintery dullness of war is replaced by summer weather, opened restaurants and the smell of freshly cut grass as volunteers tend to the memorials near Maidan Nezalezhnosti or Independence Monument, the colour is beginning to return to its vibrant streets but the reminders are still there.

Star-shaped steel anti-tank roadblocks, while no longer blocking the road, are placed on the pavement ready to be deployed again.

Cultural sites and businesses have taken precautions to protect themselves from missile attacks, such as those carried out in Kyiv on Sunday: In cities throughout the country, church windows are covered with chipboard or metal sheeting to protect stained glass windows; statues and other precious monuments are surrounded with sandbags and steel structures.

On Khreschatyk Street, Gucci and Burberry remain open despite their windows covered in chipboard.

Air-raid sirens no longer phase most Ukrainians despite the warning of potential Kalibr cruise missiles.

In the western city of Lviv - a city more closely resembling a central European city, that is often targeted due to its proximity to the Polish border, a key military aid supply route – people stroll with their glasses of wine and beer to a bomb shelter in the centre of the city.

“We only go to the shelter if we hear a crash,” said one resident in Kyiv, as a siren blared through the city. She was part of a hundreds-long queue outside the Central Post Office to purchase the latest edition of the “Russian warship, go f*** yourself” stamp.

The expression became a national slogan of resistance after a Ukrainian serviceman responded this way to a threat from the Moskva, the flagship in Russia’s Black Sea fleet; later immortalised in the form of a stamp which depicts the serviceman giving the middle finger to the warship.

In the latest editions of the stamp, the word “done” is added to the original and in the second, the serviceman gives the finger to an empty sea – mocking the fact that on 14th April, two Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missiles sunk the highly important vessel.

In another, more solitary, expression of resistance near Saint Sophia’s Cathedral, a man puts up posters depicting Putin as a young protégé of Adolf Hitler – a common comparison in the demonstrations against the war.

The conflict, the largest ground war in Europe since the Second World War, has claimed over 4,000 civilian lives, including 268 children, according to The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

However, the actual death toll could be much higher as Mariupol’s Mayor Vadym Boichenko estimated there were 22,000 deaths in the city of Mariupol alone, which was laid siege to by Russia.

Since 24th February there have been economic “losses already close to one trillion dollars,” according to Oleg Ustenko, Economics Advisor to President Zelensky.

This includes “300 engineering structures and 24,000 kilometres of roads [which] were destroyed,” said Andrii Ivko, First Deputy Head of Ukravtodor, Ukraine’s state road agency.

“We are working on restoration every day. Some 930 kilometres of roads have already been cleared and 40 temporary structures and detours have been created,” Ivko said.

Complicating the reconstruction of regular life are the thousands of landmines scattered across the country. While national authorities have located, recorded, and removed nearly 80,000 mines, the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining said that it may take decades to rid the country of these weapons – a process that can only begin once the war ends.

While the war has mostly left the western and central regions, allowing Kyiv to begin rebuilding the damage caused, fighting still rages in the eastern Donbas region where it is becoming ever more complicated for Ukrainian forces to repel Russian advances.

At the time of writing, the heaviest fighting is taking place in the city of Sievierodonetsk, where in recent days both sides have either captured or recaptured territory in what President Zelensky said is “probably one of the most difficult [battles] throughout this war.”

Russian forces have learned from their previous mistakes earlier in the war and are better prepared to defend the territory that it has captured.

The British Ministry of Defence said in an intelligence update last week that Russia has adopted a “strategy of attrition” such that it will grind Ukrainian forces from its well-dug-in positions in the Donbas. Inevitably, leading to a very long conflict as neither side shows an interest in a ‘soft’ diplomatic solution.

Suggestions from the West have become increasingly frustrating to Ukrainians, who argue that it may be better for Ukraine to concede some of its territory in order to bring an end to the war.

The Kyiv International Institute of Sociology recently published the results of a survey which found that 82 per cent of Ukrainians oppose territorial concessions, even if this would end the war quicker.

Bearing in mind that the war in the Donbas did not begin on 24th February, it began in 2014 after an outbreak of anti-government violence and after pro-Russian separatists seized portions of the region, Moscow and Kyiv could be willing to continue this war for many years.

As life returns to a new normal in cities beyond the reach of artillery, life in the Donbas is increasingly at risk.