The Kyiv unit patrolling the streets as law and order cracks under war

Drunks, thieves, spies and hedgehogs are all in a night's work for the men backing up city's overstretched police force

Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates

The call came around midnight. There was a suspicious man poking around a rundown complex of garages and workshops, police had heard a gunshot and so they wanted backup.

The men of the Maidan group rolled out of the bodyshop that served as their headquarters, into a couple of vans with personalised Maidan numberplates and their own ambulance, and set off into the eerie quiet of curfew-hours Kyiv.