As night fell that first evening, gunfights broke out around the government quarter. Oleksiy Arestovych, a veteran of Ukraine’s military intelligence service (said) “It was an absolute madhouse”. “Automatics for everyone.” Russian troops, he says, made two attempts to storm the compound. Zelensky later told me that his wife and children were still there. Offers came in from American and British forces to evacuate the President and his team. The idea was to help them set up a government in exile, most likely in eastern Poland, that could continue to lead from afar. Speaking on a secure landline with the...