Zelensky in tearful anniversary tribute

‘It was horrible. The devil is not somewhere distant, he is with us’

‘He said our armed forces were strong, that we’d put up a fight, and that we’d prevail in the end. My husband has at least made good step towards our victory’

it suggested he feels the Kremlin’s hit squads are not the threat they once were. He seemed relaxed, answered questions in English, Ukrainian and Russian.

The range of questions showed just how far the Zelensky fan club has spread. Yes, he was grateful to Sweden for their tanks, to Australia for their Bushmaster armoured vehicles, and to Germany and the EU. And no, he didn’t mind if a starstruck Azerbaijani journalist leaped up on the podium with him for a selfie requested by his young son.

Yet amid the jokes, there was also an awareness that elsewhere in Kyiv last year, there were Ukrainians who had had no teams of presidential bodyguards to keep them from Russian troops. The horrors of his visit to Bucha, where he paid a visit after Russian troops had left massacres in their wake, made for his “worst night” of the whole year.

“It was horrible,” he said. “The devil is not somewhere distant, he is with us.”

Yesterday marked a year since Larisa Mutushunko woke to the sound of Russian tanks near her home in Bucha on the outskirts of Kyiv. The suburb where she lived was about to bear the brunt of Russia’s assault on the capital, but as explosions rattled her windows, she was comforted by the words of her husband, Mykhailo, a retired fighter pilot.

She said: “He said our armed forces were strong, that we’d put up a fight, and that we’d prevail in the end.”

Mr Mutushunko was proved right. After a month-long campaign in Bucha, during which they committed some of the war’s worst human rights atrocities, Russian forces eventually withdrew as the siege of Kyiv failed. As Ms Mutushunko attended a ceremony yesterday in the town to remember the dead, the tortured, the orphaned, it was without her husband’s reassuring presence.

Last summer, keen to contribute to the war effort, he had re-enlisted as a pilot, only to be shot down over the Black Sea in June, his body washing up on the coast of Bulgaria. He now lies buried in the cemetery in Bucha where the ceremony took place.

“I didn’t believe this war would ever happen, but my husband has at least made good step towards our victory,” his widow added, wiping tears from her eyes as she stood over his grave.

Prior to the war, Bucha, along with neighbouring Irpin, was just another pleasant Kyiv suburb, surrounded by pine woods and much in demand as a bolt-hole from Kyiv’s soviet-era sprawl.

The two towns’ locations on the city’s north-west outskirts also put them directly in the path of the Kremlin war machine as it advanced on Kyiv last year. As Ukrainian troops put up fierce resistance the attackers took their frustrations out on local civilians, allegedly killing nearly 500 people in Bucha and up to 300 in Irpin.

When Russians pulled out last April the suburbs were found littered with corpses, which prompted Britain and America to call for Vladimir Putin to be tried for war crimes. Yesterday, amid freezing temperatures and bitingly cold winds, both towns held commemorations to mark the anniversary.

In Irpin, Mayor Oleksandr Markushyn joined soldiers and families in laying flowers at a pine forest-flanked cemetery that has expanded rapidly in the past year. The civilian section has around 120 new graves – most dated from last February and March. In a brief speech, Mr Markushyn made it clear that yesterday’s ceremony was possibly only because some residents had already paid the ultimate price.

Mr Markushyn said: “We are writing the new history of Ukraine , but unfortunately we are writing it in blood.”

At one point, the Russians even send him mobile phone messages, offering him the choice to take a bribe to surrender, or be killed.

He replied by advising the occupiers to leave themselves before they were killed. He said: “I still get messages from them now, threatening to kill me and my family.”

For the soldiers who turned up at the ceremonies in Irpin and Bucha, the occasion was in some ways a reunion.

Many had not seen each other since the war began. and between the prayers and singing of the national anthem, there were many hugs and handshakes.