Lviv central information point...

We were lucky enough to have a translator, Yuri, who works in IT sales during the week and volunteers, mainly for a medical charity, at weekends. We were given a table, without question, in the very busy arrivals/departures hall in Lviv central railway station. Trains arriving from places we recognised from the news - Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Mariupol - in fact, all the people we talked to were from the Donbas/southern regions, where the fighting is most intense. There was an elderly woman from Mariupol who could not hold back tears as she told us about her house that no longer exists and her garden, which seemed equally important.

The question we had was answered - there is a need, probably more so here in Lviv, for information on the UK sponsorship scheme and others. There are interesting statistics now, as we learned in the andmeeting yesterday:

6 million people fled Ukraine but 2 million have returned, which is rising.

8 million are internally displaced, i.e. within Ukraine (25 per cent want to return home).

After having lunch with Yuri in a traditional Ukranian restaurant, we spent a cold, windy afternoon walking around the old city, visiting the pretend coffee mine again, buying renowned Lviv chocolate, drinking coffee and listening to a really talented youth jazz quintet on the street, who were donating 30 per cent of their proceeds to charity.