Returning to Kyiv one year on as Ukraine marks 1,000 days of brutal war
By Simon Newton, BFBS Forces News' Ukraine correspondent in Kyiv
On the overnight train into Kyiv, women and children packed the sleeper compartments, many returning home to see husbands on the frontline.
It's a year since we were last in Kyiv, and Ukraine's capital has the same tense atmosphere as the war reaches its 1,000th day.
There's a palpable sense of apprehension about what the coming weeks and months will hold.
I visited the city's wall of remembrance, lined with the faces of thousands of dead Ukrainian soldiers.
There I met local Filiuk Mariya who emotionally spoke about what it's like living through this brutal war.
"The first thing I can say is that everyone else in the world outside Ukraine, they don't understand what we're facing in our regular daily life.
"Our cities are destroyed and totally scratched off the surface of the Earth. People are being killed all the time and all this horrible stuff, it's not clear and open to the rest of the world.
"Those who aren't losing their close relatives will never understand the price we are paying. Every day we walk through the centre of the city and see people without their legs, without their hands.
"The rest of the world are not doing as much as they need to. We still need so much help."
When I last visited Ukraine, it was recovering from a failed counteroffensive. Now it faces bigger threats.
In the east the Russian army is in the ascendancy, making slow grinding advances at the cost of thousands of lives.
North Korea has sent troops to fight alongside Russia, just 10,000 for now, but with fears that number could increase tenfold.
And this week Moscow launched its largest airstrike on Ukraine for a year, sending hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles into cities across the country.
But by far the largest concern is the impending arrival of Donald Trump and what that will mean for this war-weary country.
If America's incoming president pulls the plug on military aid, can Europe really fill the gap? Will he try and force Kyiv into an unacceptable peace deal, once that would see Ukraine lose the territory seized by Russia?
And then there's the question of US long-range missiles.
President Biden has taken the brakes off and finally agreed to allow Ukraine to fire US weapons into Russia.
So far Vladimir Putin hasn't said what Moscow's response will be. But here in Kyiv, and across this embattled country, they are braced for Russia's response.
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