Millions of people are on the move, heading for Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Moldova and Romania. It is Europe’s biggest refugee crisis since the second world war

After four days on the road, sleeping in her car, Ludmila Lyskevska was in a defiant mood. “Putin has gone bonkers. He wants Ukraine to be part of his imperium,” she said, stretching her legs as snow fell from a white sky. “He’s managed to unite the whole country against him.”

Lyskevska was travelling in a three-car family convoy. The group was part of a vast caravan of vehicles waiting to leave war-stricken Ukraine and cross the border into Poland. Over the course of a 20-minute conversation, her group advanced a mere 100 metres. They had been queueing for 20 hours. Behind her, more cars arrived.

Ukrainian intelligence says major general in Russia’s 41st army died outside Kharkiv along with other senior officers

• Ukraine invasion: latest updates

A Russian general has been killed in fighting around Kharkiv, Ukrainian intelligence has claimed, which would make him the second general the Russian army has lost in Ukraine in a week.

The intelligence arm of the Ukrainian defence ministry said Maj Gen Vitaly Gerasimov, chief of staff of the 41st Army, had been killed outside the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, along with other senior officers.

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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