At first glance life in Lviv seems normal. People sit in cafés with croissants and cappuccinos, walk their dogs, put recycling out and order takeaways online. The trams are running and the petrol stations haven’t run dry.

But it is not normal. There are checkpoints on roads into the city. Schools and universities are closed, as are many shops. It is now against the law to sell alcohol. The streets are full of refugees with exhausted faces, laden with suitcases and children, talking urgently into their phones. Ukrainian soldiers wearing blue armbands mill around with Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders. An advert in a bus stop depicts a silhouette of a Russian soldier, hands and head upturned, with the tagline “Occupier! If you want to live, show the trident” – a reference both to his surrender pose and Ukraine’s coat of arms.

Outside a church, mourners crowd around the coffins of three soldiers being loaded into vans on their way to the cemetery. Andriy Sadovyi, the mayor, comes to pay his condolences before walking back to the city-council building in the main square. Lviv, a city of 700,000, with spires and cobblestones and cafés, was part of Poland and the Austro-Hungarian Empire for much of its history. Suddenly, it has 200,000 more inhabitants – Ukrainians from eastern cities under siege, as well as diplomats and foreigners who have arrived to help and fight.

“How is it going?” I ask him.

“So far, so good – in Lviv,” he says. “But very bad in Ukraine.”

War digs its trench a little deeper every day. The shock and adrenaline of the first two weeks have been subsumed into a focused determination. Everyone is tired, but also busy, alert and working very hard. People answer their phones after two rings and reply to texts immediately. They bounce between Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp, making plans and discussing logistics, with friends and friends of friends, in Ukraine and further afield. They’re helping refugees find lodging and transportation; they’re trying to find bulletproof vests for foreign fighters.

“Random people put you in contact with someone else,” says Anton, a Ukrainian-American who left behind his wife and three children in Texas to join the fight (he does not want us to use his surname). “People are very willing to share information, to give you the number of their sister, their friend. It’s all very spontaneous.” A man walks in front of us, with his phone clamped to his ear like everyone these days, and we overhear him say, “I love you guys.”

The sense of safety is ebbing. On Friday at dawn there were Russian airstrikes on airports in the western Ukrainian towns of Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk, each of them a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Lviv. Later that morning an air-raid siren sounded while we were in a café; the waitress asked politely if we would like to move away from the windows. On Sunday Russian missiles hit an army base housing foreign volunteers just 50km away. More than 40 people there are reported to have been killed.

In the square outside the Trade Union Congress, a group of 40 or so army volunteers musters as a recruitment officer shouts instructions. “We are going into the field. Who here has equipment?” Many hands go up. Most of the men are young, in their 20s, wearing a combination of camouflage and tracksuits, military boots and trainers. They carry rucksacks; some have rolled-up bedding. One, standing next to me, has a rifle over his shoulder. “Where did you get your uniform?” I ask him. “Bought it at a local army supply shop,” he replies.

War digs its trench a little deeper every day

The recruitment officer tells the volunteers that some will stay to defend Lviv and others will go to the front. The men give a clear and unified cheer: “Glory to the Nation! Death to the Enemy! Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Heroes!”

“This is the most difficult moment,” continues the recruiter. “But this is our country and you have made the right choice...For a thousand years Ukrainians have fought among themselves…Remember when the Kyivan Rus was defeated by the Tartars? They were not united! We will unite all, poor and rich, whatever your political position. We must unite against our common enemy!” Again the soldiers cheer, “GLORY TO UKRAINE!”

I go to the Maria Zankovetska theatre to meet Andriy Matsyak, its artistic director. “We are very proud of the Ukrainian people, who are fighting the enemy so selflessly,” he says, as we stand in the marble foyer, surrounded by boxes of donated food, water, blankets and medicine.

“This war has become a unifying force, bringing people of different nationalities, who speak different languages, together in this powerful European nation. I can feel it at every step.” He takes a call from someone stuck outside the city who needs a lift, before continuing our conversation. As well as constant anxiety, he says, there is also “a constant level of concentration…Absolutely we will win this war.”

Outside, in Lviv’s main square, people are wrapping statues in foam and plastic sheeting, secured with duct tape. Poseidon’s trident sticks out, pointing skyward.

Refugees keep coming, 100,000 a day. The streets of Lviv are jammed with cars with licence plates from Kharkiv, Donetsk, Kyiv. The newly refurbished plaza outside the railway station is packed with people, shattered after days sheltering in cellars and train journeys of ten or twenty hours in crammed carriages.

The station is a little more organised now than it was a week ago. Volunteers in orange vests answer questions, clear up rubbish, hand out soup and sausage sandwiches, tea and coffee. There are extra toilets, medics on hand and information about transport out of Lviv, where to stay in the city and where to leave your pets.

People wrapped statues in foam. Poseidon’s trident stuck out, pointing skyward

Inside the ticket hall, with its vaulted ceiling, refugees heading to Poland are separated into two queues. Above one is a sign that reads “Waiting time is currently eight hours”. The other queue, for mothers with small children, the infirm and the disabled, is shorter. Around ten trains depart from Lviv to Poland each day.

Upstairs in the first-class waiting rooms – one is signposted “The Hall of Enhanced Comfort” – volunteers have laid out makeshift bedding for mothers and children. “The children absorb their parents’ mood,” says Olena Borona, a psychologist and one of the volunteers. “If the parents are stressed, the children are; if the parents are calm, the children are OK.” She says things are moving faster now that more trains and buses are going to Poland. Sometimes, families had to wait at the station for several days. Now most stay in Lviv only a few hours.

But the heartbreak is as overwhelming as ever. Some people, says Borona, are paralysed by the decision of whether to end their journey in Lviv, in the relative safety – for now – of western Ukraine, or to continue on to Poland and an uncertain future far from home. A few, she says, even decide to go back to Kyiv – but not those with children.

In the underpass between the platforms, several hundred people wait for volunteers to usher them up the steps to board the waiting train. Ukrainian border guards stand at the doors, checking IDs, stamping passports and barking orders.

“Over there, please, stay in the line.”

“There is only standing room left.”

“Go, go ahead. Don’t be slow.”

The Bohuslavskyy family – a mother, father, two small girls and a newborn baby – have not been allowed to board the train because the father is being pursued by the Ukrainian authorities for an outstanding alimony payment. (Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 may leave the country only if they have three children or more, or are single parents.)

Their baby boy, Bogdan, is five days old. He was born in a hospital on the outskirts of Kharkiv, in a filthy, airless basement, as shells fell nearby. Bogdan sleeps in his carrycot, oblivious to the clank and hiss of the train standing on the platform, the worry of his parents and his sisters squabbling. I asked his mother Natalia how it felt to have a baby at such a time. She smiled: “He’s amazing!”

His wife mouths “I love you”, and he mouths “I love you” back

The train is loaded with women and children. A father stands on the platform looking at his family on the other side of a grimy train window. His wife mouths “I love you” and he mouths “I love you” back. He stands for 20 minutes or more, looking at his family, as if to imprint every precious moment in his memory. His teenage son plays peekaboo with his little sister.

The man wraps his arms around himself for comfort, rocking gently back on his heels, his face wrenching in pride and love and anguish. Finally the train lurches and begins to move out of the station. He waves to them until the train has gone, then walks slowly back down the steps. Outside in the plaza, someone is playing “Yesterday” by the Beatles on a piano. ■

Wendell Steavenson has reported on post-Soviet Georgia, the Iraq war and the Egyptian revolution. She is sending regular dispatches for 1843 magazine from Ukraine. You can read her previous dispatches, and the rest of our coverage of the war, here

PHOTOGRAPHS: CHIEN-CHI CHANG/ MAGNUM