ScottishNews.com

Our driver was talking about the war in Ukraine. My wife translated as he described life in Ukraine and she described life in Scotland, and that line has rung in my head ever since.

He questioned where the effort is going. The money and manpower spent supplying a war could be spent developing something else, he said: hospitals, children’s care, diseases that are still untreatable.

The whole world would benefit. Instead, he called the war a politicians’ game that gives ordinary citizens nothing.

For several weeks now he has been buying old 4x4s and SUVs in Scotland and England to help the war effort.

He told us of civilians with .50-calibre rounds hung around their necks, ready to be slotted into heavy machine guns used to shoot down the Russian drones devastating Ukrainian cities.

We were travelling from Warsaw towards Rivne, in western Ukraine, and his words came with us.

There are two ways in: bus or train. The train is more dangerous. The bus has two tiers, essentially economy and business, and prices have climbed. A year ago the same journey cost less than £100 for two. It is now £160 for two, for 12 hours on a coach. The weariness is hard to explain: slow, grinding, and heavier on the body than an 18-hour flight to Sri Lanka.

Then there is the luxury option, a Mercedes coach with leather seats and Ukrainian pop blasting through the speakers, which sets you back nearly £300.

Some tracks had a beat you could dance to in a nightclub. We passed fields on the way to my wife’s home with that cheerful, surreal soundtrack playing over a conversation about devastation, survival and the quiet tearing of a nation’s fabric.

Once we crossed the Ukrainian border, there is little I can say without putting people at risk. After that it was homeward bound to the family.

By then we had been on the bus for around eight hours, with five still to go. The headlights were switched out to dimmer lights, though they were still bright. The Starlink on the bus was no longer useable because the speed was capped at 18km/ps, days after Trump’s ‘so-called’ energy ceasefire.

The roads were stranger. Many were lined with bright lamp posts, the sort of lighting you would expect a country under drone attack and missile fire to switch off.

When we asked why they were left on, our driver told us nobody knew, and described it as one of the many silly situations decided by the government.

At 23:14 we reached Lutsk and the air raid siren went off. Nobody ran from their vehicles towards shelter. Traffic kept moving and we drove on to our destination. Until the siren sounded, you would never have known the country was at war.

At 23:50, on our approach to Rivne, all the street lights had been turned on, which is what I expected after being through Lutsk, which was brightly shining as the sirens were blaring to alert residents of possible drones. 

It appears to suggest areas not impacted by the war are trying to be business as usual. Maybe it is down to town mayors - no-one seems to know.

Then the city itself. There were a few street lights on, at the entrance but then none later.

Driving through a city that doesn’t have street lights on, minus the traffic lights, is an eerie experience. The darkness makes the familiar seem strangely unfamiliar.

And if you’re wondering, yes, the roads are just as bad as in the UK.

The journey from Sunday afternoon into the early hours of Monday morning left me confronting how sheltered our life back home really is.

To put things in context, the average salary in Ukraine is about $700 a month after tax compared with roughly £1,500 a month in Scotland after tax.

Outside the cities, land is the safety net. Families grow their own vegetables, keep a few animals and live off what the plot gives them.

Breakfast is often whatever was left from the night before, and there is a lot of potato. Nothing is wasted, because nothing can be. Cereal, porridge, eggs and toast are the luxuries we take for granted at home, and a cooked meal stretched across two sittings is a saving that adds up when the average wage is a fraction of ours. Even so, the food is good enough that you find yourself craving it.

If breakfast is careful, the table is generous. Big meals are shared with family and friends, and not just on special occasions. It happens regularly, and nobody treats it as something to schedule around.

When they celebrate, it is a party. Cheap whisky is treated like vodka: you shot it. Good whisky is savoured, and so is the company it is poured for.

At home, we tend to save enjoyment for when the diary allows. Here, it is not put off.

The custom that keeps catching me out is the toast. You say cheers before every drink. Finish yours early, with another already poured and no cheers yet, and you end up shotting it to catch up. Or I do.

In a country where people have less, where war has made every journey, meal and ordinary night more complicated, there is still a determination to share what they have and enjoy the people around them while they can.