Following another week of intensive and lethal Russian bombardment of Ukraine's cities, a composite image has been doing the rounds on Ukrainian social media.
Underneath an old, black-and-white photo of Londoners queuing at a fruit and vegetable stall surrounded by the bombed-out rubble of the Blitz, a second image – this time in colour – creates a striking juxtaposition.
Taken on Saturday, it shows shoppers thronging to similar stalls in a northern suburb of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, while a column of black smoke rises ominously in the background.
Bombs can't stop markets, reads the caption linking the two images.
The night before, as the city's sleep was interrupted once again by the now all-too-familiar booms of missile and drone strikes, two people were killed and nine others injured.
The implication is clear. Rather than destroying public morale, Russia's dramatic ramping up of attacks on Ukrainian cities is conjuring a spirit of resilience reminiscent of 1940s Britain.
When I visited the market – with the black fumes still billowing from the missile strike on a nearby warehouse – that sense of fortitude was evident.
But there was plenty of fear, too.
Halyna, selling dried prunes and mushrooms, told me she saw little cause for optimism. In my opinion, according to the scriptures of the saints, this war hasn't even started yet. It will get worse. Way worse.
A shopper who felt her house tremble from the force of the blast was visibly shaken by the experience.
Inspiring memes about blitz-spirit are all very well, but for Ukraine, the far bigger question is not how to endure this war, but how to stop it.
And with President Donald Trump proclaiming his powers as a peacemaker and pushing that question back to the centre of global politics, another term from that same period in history is looming large – 'appeasement'.
The question of whether Ukraine should fight against or negotiate with an aggressor has been there since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
More than three years after it launched its full-scale invasion, the war is entering a new phase. On the battlefield, fighting has reached a brutal stalemate, and Russia is increasingly targeting Ukrainian cities far from the front line.
Its aerial attacks–using ballistic missiles, explosive-laden drones and glide bombs–have gone from an average of a few dozen each day last year to nightly, often running into the many hundreds.
What the Kremlin insists are military and quasi-military targets now regularly include Ukraine's civilian rail stations, passenger trains, gas, and electricity supplies, and homes and businesses. According to UN figures, almost 2,000 civilians have been killed this year, bringing the total since the start of the war to more than 14,000.
As well as the human toll, the financial burden is rising exponentially.
Just over a week ago, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky set off for his meeting in Washington with President Donald Trump in optimistic mood, believing that the US was running out of patience with Russia. But he was wrong-footed by a surprise Trump-Putin phone call while en route, and subsequent talk of another summit between the two leaders in Budapest.
Framing the conflict as a fight between two men who didn't like each other, Trump insisted they needed to settle the war along the existing front line. Warning of the risks of escalation, he also refused to grant Ukraine the use of long-range Tomahawk missiles to strike deep into Russia.
With hindsight, it's easy to mock Britain's policy of appeasement during the 1930s. Indeed, some did so even then. Yet we sometimes forget that the man most associated with the policy, then-prime minister Neville Chamberlain, enjoyed significant support from the US — sharing a deep fear of repeating World War One's horrors.
President Trump appears to harbour similar fears today. The risk of a widening war with a nuclear-armed state is not to be taken lightly.
However, Ukrainians emphasize a critical lesson: concessions and negotiations may promote further aggression instead of fostering peace. Russia only stops when it's washed in its own blood, said Yevhen Mahda, a professor at Kyiv's National Aviation University. Ukraine has proven this. The sooner the West understands, the better for us all.
Amidst the chaos and violence, these discussions about appeasement echo a complex historical narrative, providing a nuanced context to the ongoing struggle of Ukraine today.
