Restaurants bustle, new bookshops open, the air raid app goes off. This is our defiant reality in Kyiv ( www.theguardian.com )

As Russia seeks to destroy our way of life, Ukrainian efforts to keep society going should never be taken for granted

A family member who works for the Kyiv Сity State Administration, recently told me about a colleague. She is a single mother with a 10-year-old son. After hearing a recent explosion during one of the air raids, she fainted; her son, convinced she had died, knocked on the neighbour’s door asking for help at 3am.

Two months later, she quit her job at the administration’s housing department, which, on top of its regular work, is now reviewing requests for financial compensation from Kyiv residents whose flats were damaged by recent missile attacks. They have two months to provide residents with decisions. They often work from 7am till 11pm, rushing home just before the curfew. Her resignation has taken a toll on the others.

Such stories are not dramatic enough to be reported, but they are everyday realities for many people in Ukraine. Two years after the full-scale invasion, most Ukrainians are pretending to live normal lives. On the surface, a foreign visitor might be amazed by how vibrant daily life still appears to be in Kyiv, with restaurants bustling, new bookstores opening, and people going about their lives. But the fact the capital stays intact is purely the product of its air defences, which are the best in Ukraine. To imagine what could happen otherwise, one only has to visit Kharkiv, where the historic downtown has been partially destroyed and some suburbs have been wiped out.