'Putin's goal is to break our defiance, but it won't work'

In Kyiv, Sam Kiley meets a politician whose daughter was born just before the Russian invasion and - alongside her family - is battling to survive as Putin targets power supplies

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The tawdry routine of everyday misery of cold, darkness and fear that grinds at the human soul: that is Vladimir Putin’s strategy of attacking civilians across Ukraine and could break the country’s will to fight on. But it’s unlikely.

Showers in darkness, a shave in cold water every morning, two small children who know the Russian president is trying to kill them, and dawn runs to a streetside stall for coffee and cocoa, the only morale booster for a new day. These are the routines of Kyiv residents like Oleksandr Merezhko. He knows he is lucky.

His four-year-old daughter, Sophia, is the same age as the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The elder, Lilian, is seven, so neither have known a world in which Russian troops are not fighting inside their country.

Sophia can tell an outgoing missile blast from an incoming Shahed drone attack. She attends kindergarten. Her older sister has learning difficulties, so Sophia grabs her hand when the sirens scream, and the air buzzes with what the family calls “bees” - incoming drones.

She then leads her sister to safety in the Soviet-era bunkers outside their old but untargeted ground-floor apartment, where school carries on.

"For them it’s normal. They cannot imagine their life without it," Oleksandr explains. "They know that when they go to the kindergarten we still don’t have power in the flat. When they come back there is no power. They have learned how to play using little lights and how to play in darkness.

“Better than adults I think, children are more adaptable. And they never complain.”