In the early days after Russian forces occupied Kherson, Ukrainians sought to cling on to the vestiges of their old lives. They kept on using the hryvnia, retained their existing telephone numbers and schoolchildren continued to learn remotely from the same text books.

But with the war dragging into its sixth month, the infrastructure of the Ukrainian state has slowly been eroded as “Russification” of the southern city has taken hold.

In recent weeks, the last bank dealing in Ukraine’s currency has been shut down, the few spots where a Ukrainian phone signal could be picked up have dwindled to none and local shops now stock groceries from Russia and the annexed peninsula of Crimea.