‘This only unites us’: defiance as deadly strikes bring war back to Kyiv

Series of missiles shatter several months of calm but normal life quickly returns amid the destruction

• Russia-Ukraine war - latest updates

Shevchenko Park in central Kyiv is a tranquil public garden, where the trees are turning golden against the city's blue, autumnal skies. Presiding over the park is a statue of Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine's national poet, persecuted by the Russians in the 19th century for writing in Ukrainian.

But on Monday that sense of calm was violently shattered when a series of missiles hit the city centre. War had returned to what had been, for several months, a mostly peaceful - if anxious - city.