Stay or go? Ukrainian mayors’ agonising choice as Russia invaded

Two days before the Russian invasion, Ukraine's deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk received a call from the British ambassador to Ukraine, with a simple message: get out of Kyiv immediately.

The call, as Vereshchuk recalled it, was one of a number of warnings made to senior government figures, amid western expectations that the Russian army would swiftly win control of Kyiv and seek to install its own puppet government.

"The Americans and British were warning that there's a kill list, and that the main target is the president and his family, and then members of the government," said Vereshchuk.

"We were told, 'They will be looking for you, they'll hunt you down and they will kill you.' And I said 'What, they're going to kill a deputy prime minister on live television? OK, no problem, so we'll stay here and let the whole world see it,'" she said.

The decision to remain in Kyiv began with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. On the second day of the war, he told European leaders on a conference call: "This might be the last time you see me alive," adding that he had information he was on a Russian hitlist. He also reportedly rejected an offer of evacuation from Kyiv made by the US president, Joe Biden, saying he "needed ammunition, not a ride".

In the first weeks of the war, Russian state media promoted a number of conspiracy theories about Zelenskiy's location: that the videos showing him in Kyiv were fake and that in fact the Ukrainian leader had fled immediately after the invasion.

However, these claims have become more forlorn as evidence mounted he had remained in the capital, and his regular, snappy video addresses have become a huge source of inspiration for many Ukrainians.