NATO Issue Ups Tension But Citizens Not Panicking

Ukraine On The Brink: UK & US Plea For Russia

- Chris Hughes

AFTER some confusion, Ukraine yesterday insisted it did want to join NATO. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said: I believe that we should move along the path we have chosen.

Russia has seized on the issue as it ramps up its war rhetoric - but after eight years of being told its giant neighbour will invade, the citizens of Ukraine that we met seemed to have mixed feelings about the danger.

Kyiv resident Alex, 31, who runs a bar in the city, is originally from war-battered Donetsk.

Even though he has experienced the horrors of war, he shrugs and says: | don't think they are coming but, if they do, I will join the civil defence groups.

And then I guess it will be time to get a gun and go out and shoot some Russians. He thinks any war would last a week at most, explaining: Although Putin is crazy, he is not stupid. He cannot afford a full-scale war and it will be costly for the Russians. I believe we will know the answer in the next 48 hours.

The war that has raged since 2014 is 500 miles east in the Donbas region, so most Kyiv civilians have not witnessed any of the violence. But nervousness is beginning to creep in among citizens out for a walk in the sunshine yesterday.

In Kyiv central, two ladies called Anna were walking together, the older pushing her four-month-old son Denys.