In Kyiv, a network of shelters are preparing for war

Yelena Vasilenko keeps a smile on her face as she stands on a snowy Kyiv street, cheerfully trying to lure passers-by into Mitla, the traditional Ukrainian restaurant where she works as a host. It is only when she gets home and turns on the news that the growing possibility of war intrudes.

When I'm here on the street I don't think about it, but when I switch on my television, I get anxious, the 66-year-old grandmother of three said during a long pause between customers that gave her time to contemplate the invasion-sized Russian army that has been massed around Ukraine since late last year.

I need to think about the safety of my children and grandchildren. I have a dacha in Chernihiv region, but should I run to there? Ms. Vasilenko said that a region close to Ukraine's border with Belarus is where Russian troops are also gathering. We don't know where it will start, or how it will start, so you can't develop any kind of plan. It isn't easy to stay calm in Kyiv. Her commute to work at Mitla has been interrupted by false bomb threats to subway stations, part of what Ukrainian authorities say is a hybrid war aimed at demoralizing the country ahead of a possible invasion. Dozens of schools, subway stations and government offices have been shut down in recent months due to hoax threats. Ms. Vasilenko said that it just exhausts you.

Mitla captures the mood in Ukraine in early 2022 in more ways than one. The borscht- and-perogies restaurant is almost deserted on a Sunday afternoon, but most Ukrainians point to inflation as their biggest worry, ahead of the possibility of war Mitla can also double as a bomb shelter in the previously unthinkable case of large-scale hostilities that see the Ukrainian capital attack.

The restaurant, which is under a central Kyiv building, is one of more than 3,000 possible shelters of various kinds listed on an online map that Kyiv authorities published last year.

Many of them are Cold War relics, built at a time when the Soviet Union, which Ukraine and Russia were both part of, planned for the possibility of nuclear war with the West. Some come complete with power generators, air filters, running water, sewage and telephone lines, and were originally meant to house essential personnel underground for as long as necessary.

Others, like Mitla, have been using reinforced basements for other purposes over the peace of the last few decades. Ukraine and Russia have fought an undeclared war since 2014 that has killed some 14,000 people in Ukraine southeastern Donbas region, but the frontline is more than 700 kilometres from Kyiv, which has largely been unaffected by the fighting. I can't comment on the threat of war, but this shelter has been refurbished in last three years and is ready to protect civilians if necessary, said Volodymyr Kotsiuba, a member of Kyiv's Civil Defence Unit who gave a tour of a Grade 2 Soviet-era facility on the western edge of the city last week. The violet-walled shelter that is stocked with gas masks, duct tape and old-fashioned telephones is connected to the city's water and electricity grid and can hold up to 350 people.

The larger Grade 1 shelters are completely autonomous, with their own power and water supplies. There are as many as 2,000 people that can be found in some of the buildings. "I hope that we never use them except for tourism purposes," Kotsiuba said.

The preparation of the network of shelters is one of the few visible signs of a possible war. The situation in Kyiv continued as normal this weekend, even as satellite images and social media videos showed that Russia was continuing to amass military units to the east, south and north of Ukraine, adding to a force that analysts say is already too large to be explained as any kind of drill.

There is no panic or hysteria, Ukrainian-Canadian lawyer Daniel Bilak, a former advisor to Ukraine's prime minister, said of the atmosphere in Kyiv. More likeMany Ukrainians can't convince themselves that Russian President Vladimir Putin will invade, but everyone I know, they all say that if he does, they will fight. Russia has denied that it has any intention to attack Ukraine, but Mr. Putin has also stated that if the West doesn't give it a guarantee that Ukraine will never join the U.S.-backed North Atlantic Treaty Organization military alliance, his country will use military-technical measures. Russia says that the NATO expansions since the end of the Cold War threatens its security, and the presence of NATO trainers and military equipment in Ukraine, including a 200-sold Canadian mission, is a red line that forces it to take action.

Several high-level diplomacy in European capitals has failed to deal with the crisis, and has been the focus of high-level diplomacy in the past two weeks. On Friday, the U.S. agreed to respond to Moscow's security demands, which the Kremlin published last month, with its own written positions a step that may or may not lead to further talks.

On Sunday, the Kremlin lashed out at the British government, which accused Moscow of plotting to remove President Volodymyr Zelensky and install a pro-Russian government in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the British government's claims that they were based on unspecified intelligence disinformation. Yevheniy Murayev, a former Ukrainian MP who was named as a potential candidate to head the Kremlin-backed regime, dismissed the allegations as nonsense and claimed they were concocted by his political opponents to make him a target of Western economic sanctions. In an exchange of messages with The Globe, he said that there were other politicians in Ukraine that Moscow would be more likely to support, though he said it would not be ethical for him to name them.