Russian warships have been moving ominously between the coast outside Odesa and annexed Crimea. Each morning, Odesa’s remaining residents wake up and check their progress

The tourist cafes are behind barricades. The grand opera house is surrounded by a wall of sandbags. Tank traps block the approaches to the legendary Potemkin steps.

Nobody in Odesa can quite believe that Vladimir Putin would launch an assault on this city, a place bound to Russia by family, literary and cultural ties, a place of almost mythical resonance for many Russians.

Violinist and teacher Vera Lytovchenko has traded a theatre for a basement and played her violin for fellow Kharkiv residents taking cover from Russian bombing.

Lytovchenko said she was inspired in seeing one of her students play in a makeshift bomb shelter at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

‘It was very difficult to play and think about something that wasn’t war. But I decided I must do something,’ Lytovchenko said. ‘We have become a family in this cellar and when I played they cried. They forget about the war for some moments and think about something else.’

Video of Lytovchenko playing Ніч яка місячна (The Night is So Moonlit) has gone viral on Twitter, but Lytovchenko said she is mainly interested about her friends’ and colleagues’ reactions on Facebook because that is how she knows they are still alive.

Lytovchenko said she would stay in Kharkiv to rebuild the city. ‘I won’t just play,’ she said. ‘This is my land. I want to help rebuild the city with my own hands. 

‘I don’t need pity. I don’t need to complain. I just need the bombing to stop then we will rebuild. I need the war to end’

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