The decision to remain can inspire local people to resist, but also have deadly consequences
Two days before the Russian invasion, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk received a call from the British ambassador to Ukraine, with a simple message: get out of Kyiv immediately.
The call, as Vereshchuk recalled it, was one of a number of warnings made to senior government figures, amid western expectations that the Russian army would swiftly win control of Kyiv and seek to install its own puppet government.
