The ubiquitous head of the Greek embassy, ​​Chargé d’Affaires ai Manolis Androulakis, is the last Western diplomat to leave Mariupol, the guarantor of the departure of a large group of OECD-excluded officials when the city fell into Russian hands on May 20. Together with a limited embassy staff, he is fighting for expatriates who are becoming increasingly difficult to contact in the occupied territories, as the Russians forced them to exchange their Ukrainian mobile phones for Russian numbers. The prestige of the Greek embassy is high, as can be seen from our meeting with the ambassadors of Italy and Portugal.

On the second day, the group breaks up. Our leader visits the speaker of parliament and the deputy director of Zelensky’s office. The rest we go to the tortured suburbs of Butsa, Hostomel and Irpin. Five months have passed since the fierce fighting, and life has been restored. But the signs of disaster are clear. We pass by the church with the graves of the executed civilians of Ukraine. The fences and garages of the houses are riddled with bullets. Inside the burnt down first floor of a ruined residential building, between glass and ashes, there is surprisingly a showcase of a living room. Houses without roofs next to the skeleton of a huge shopping center. And on a large junction near Moscow, the guts of a bridge blown up by Ukrainians to stop the Russian offensive. With smartphones in their ears, shopping carts, newspapers in their hands, young, middle-aged and older people are waiting at the bus stop. It may be a normal day, but it’s not. How many soldiers are fighting on the Kherson-Donetsk line? According to rumors, there are more than 500,000 of them. How many families are looking forward to news from the front? Their lives have been turned upside down, but they want everything to look smooth. In Irpen, a young bartender with an earring fixes broken glass with new one, painted in national colors, and serves coffee in abandoned paper cups.

Returning to the almost deserted Intercontinental, we make sandwiches on the way back. All night on the train, the next morning we land in Warsaw. The change in atmosphere is immediately felt. We have left behind the inhabitants of a country that is struggling with all its might to expel the invaders.