Postal service provides vital lifeline in face of Putin's relentless blitz

NOTHING gets through like a letter, except perhaps a Russian missile or drone launched against a town on the front line whose only lifeline is often a modest but stubbornly reliable Ukrainian post office.

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Postal van destroyed in attack; above, boss Maksym Sutkovyi

And Maksym Sutkovyi should know - he is serving with the Ukrainian postal service Ukrposhta as regional director for eastern Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk during Russia's all-out war on its neighbour.

He said: "Imagine a place where the banks have all closed up, the cash-in-transit cars have stopped arriving because it is too dangerous, and the ATMs do not work, so people have no access to cash."

In comes Ukrposhta to the string of fortress towns now synonymous with the ravages of 21st-century war: Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, as well as countless other settlements exposed to constant Russian attacks.