Funerals and wine bars: Kiev’s return to normal is not normal at all

And yet some shops and cafes have reopened. Central Khreshchatyk Street, Kiev’s main thoroughfare, is packed with traffic. And after several dry weeks, bars are now serving alcohol to war-weary customers. “We’re going to drink to relax and we’re going to drink until he dies,” a wine merchant serving a line of six said of Putin, making a suggestive thumb-and-finger gesture.

In the past week, 32 diplomatic missions have resumed their work in the capital. according to to the commander of the Ukrainian National Guard, who oversees their protection. The US embassy is not yet one of them, but its chargé d’affaires on Monday, on her first visit to the country since the Russian invasion began, said the mission could reopen by the end of May if security conditions permit.

“We listen to the security experts and if they tell us that we can return, we will return,” Kristina Kvien told reporters in Lviv.

Despite renewed activity in the city, war is never far away. A crowd gathered in central Independence Square on Tuesday afternoon to appeal for international assistance to evacuate the hundreds of Ukrainian troops still holding the last bastion of Ukrainian-controlled territory south-east of Mariupol, the Azovstal Iron and Steel Plant, keep.

There, Ukrainian troops from the 36th Separate Marine Brigade and the Azov Regiment, a unit of the country’s National Guard, have been fighting tooth and nail to prevent Russian forces from taking the plant and killing the hundreds of civilians who are in bunker in his labyrinth of tunnels. The rest of Mariupol lies in ruins.