In Kyiv in late May nearly thirty thousand people attended a book festival. The queue to enter was long, as was the list of events and panel discussions. At times it was difficult to move through the crowds filling the former arsenal building despite its enormous size, and each evening the lawns outside became suitably festival-like, with elegant marquees, strings of fairy lights and eclectic live music from the stage.

They came despite an earlier attack targeting cultural places: art museums, theatres, a literary institute, the Chernobyl museum. Russia’s foreign ministry had promised an even bigger strike and it was expected to take place on the weekend of the festival. There were air raid sirens and the atmosphere was tense, but people turned up anyway. The building would be damaged in strikes two weeks later.

To anyone not familiar with the situation in Ukraine, this might sound almost unbelievable, or at least impossible to relate to. Threat of a massive air raid? Surely you’d leave, or at least get to safety underground.

But spend some time in Ukraine and you will understand not just about the