from Gare Joyce of Sportsnet,

Sergei Varlamov has lost count of the days since he kissed his wife and kids and waved as the train pulled away. There’s no knowing how long it will be until he sees them again. When he looks at the framed photos on the living-room mantle he gets choked up.

“Of course, I want to be with them, but I felt that I had to stay here,” he says.

His wife and their three teenage kids are now in a smaller city in western Ukraine, staying with his in-laws. “Less hot there,” he explains, although of course that’s no reflection on the weather. It’s just a place less threatened than their hometown, Kyiv.

Since his family left, Russian forces advanced to within 15 miles of Kyiv’s city centre and rained artillery on not only strategic targets but also on Freedom Square, the opera house and high-rise residential buildings, as if to maximize the terror of those who have stayed behind. Though the Russians have retreated in recent days, every day seems the same for Varlamov: at once dread-filled and banal. “We’re on the left bank of the Dneiper and so far the neighbourhood looks the same,” he says. “The Russians haven’t hit us here. Still, the government asks us not to leave our homes even if it’s quiet and it has been quiet.”

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