I was just on Ukraine's front line in Kharkiv. Here's what I saw

The air-raid sirens blare constantly day and night, but after two years of war, this is now so familiar that people only react if an explosion occurs, or incoming is a certainty.

On the streets you see shoppers, you see children playing and you see municipal workers keeping the place spotlessly clean and tidy. People smile, help one another and try to live a normal life – although clearly worried about what tomorrow might bring.

On Sunday afternoon I saw crowds of people taking selfies by a blossoming magnolia tree in the city centre sunshine.

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Recent increases in attacks are again causing Kharkiv’s population to haemorrhage – during the week I was there, according to Svetlana Gorbunova, the depute mayor responsible for social services, a further 200 people had left for safety westwards.

This includes more of Kharkiv’s children, who will now live as refugees elsewhere. But they are the city’s future. Svetlana knows their safety comes first, but says this with sadness.

I was impressed with Kharkiv’s innovatory social work services at a time of increasing need and diminishing resources, but heard pleas for more help. The social work union leader Lyudmila Plastun asked if Scotland could contribute towards replacing social workers’ bicycles with motorised scooters to help them move about faster as they visit homes in their districts.

Will the families and children who are leaving return? My impression is yes – the people here love this place and exude pride in its beautiful buildings and green spaces, so many of which have been damaged by Russia’s war. The city has organised underground schools, which now serve 3000 children, with a further one about to open.

Kharkiv was in danger of falling two years ago, but to the invaders’ surprise, the Russian-speaking inhabitants and their popular army resisted and Putin’s (above) troops were thrown back to the border just 30km away, where, hated more than ever, they remain, for now at least.

Along with my friend and host Valentina, I visited Prudyanka, a village just south of the border with Russia on the main railway line from Kharkiv to Belgorod and Moscow. It was badly damaged during several weeks of fighting in 2022 and from a pre-war population of 2000, just 200 live there now.

It was poignant to see the damage inflicted by Russian shelling to the Red Army Second World War memorial, where the names of dozens of men and women villagers who died fighting the Nazis are recorded. A small statue of a mother over the memorial had been symbolically damaged where her heart would have been.

Several villagers died in the 2022 fighting, including the village policeman. The day before our visit, an aerial bomb hit an administrative building of a neighbouring town nearer the city and we could hear explosions from the border as we walked around Prudyanka.

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I was overwhelmed with the sense of social solidarity I met in Kharkiv. I hesitate to choose an example in a single person but I will highlight Yulia Kovalivska, who lives in a high-rise flat, the type of home for most of the city’s inhabitants. She is a mother and before the war was a riding instructor at the “Ecoswit” City Farm that nestles between the high-rise flats in the north-west of the city. Now she is a leading volunteer organiser in a community-based group distributing clothes, food and other essentials to those in need. I was shown the store in the basement of the block of flats – where it is safe from bombs.

Many of their donated items go to the city’s 120,000 refugees relocated from Russian-occupied areas and “grey zones”, ie, places of battle. Yulia and her colleagues also take aid to grey zone areas in the south where need is great – as is the danger to themselves.

This quiet and modest individual also volunteers at the city farm where she looks after horses and other animals. As well as entertaining children – a city farm role going back to 1935 – she and others, led by director Irina Babiy, welcome children and soldiers traumatised by their experiences, the animals therapeutically helping with recovery. Yulia’s dalmatian dog Rick contributes to such work, as does a 33-year-old horse, Plyaska, scarred from its presence during a sustained Russian attack on the Eco-Zoo in the north of the city.

It's often said that the worst of situations bring out the best in people. A sad truth, but one I certainly witnessed in beleaguered Kharkiv, where I met many outstanding individuals such as Yulia. Just ordinary people trying to deal with an extraordinary situation, retaining human values of kindness, compassion, generosity of spirit and welcome.

Several told me I was brave to come to see them in Kharkiv, a place few from the UK (apart from journalists) seem to visit.

As I left Ukraine on the night express from Kyiv to Warsaw, the train packed with women and children stoically heading westwards to safety, the news was announced that the US Senate had at last agreed $60 billion worth of weapons and other aid.

That will be welcomed by all the people I met as a bolster to their struggle for freedom, self-determination and normality.

But it’s not enough – they need more arms and finance, including from us in the UK, if they are to get the victory they crave and deserve.

Everyone wants peace, but if it’s on Russian terms it will only bring oppression to those under occupation, and continued uncertainty for everyone else in Ukraine (if not elsewhere) – a price everyone I met felt was too high.

Colin Turbett is a member of the Common Weal Care Reform Group and the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign Scotland