I wonder if a miracle is happening in the person of Volodymyr Zelenskiy

From armchair generals to bewildered Ukrainian ex-pats calling my LBC radio show this week, there’s been a real sense of disbelief that the long conflict on the eastern border with Russia has now become all-out war.

Before the shocking violence aimed at Ukraine’s people began on 24 February, views ranged from “Nato should give Putin what he wants and say Ukraine will never join” to “Get Western boots on the ground in Ukraine and show him what he’s really up against”. I doubt the solution is anything close to either of those two options.

It can be hard doing phone-in programmes on big geopolitical stories. Why does a war far, far away matter at all to me and my family? But each day that passes with stories of families fleeing, fighting or sheltering underground, it’s clear the events in Ukraine are front and centre in most homes.

I tend to start with the end. The end of the Cold War. At the very beginning of my journalism career, the Berlin Wall came down. Mikhail Gorbachev was like no Soviet leader we’d ever seen, offering openness and change after years of desiccated, robotic Russian leaders. From my young, Western European Catholic perspective, Gorbachev looked and felt Heaven-sent. Pope John Paul II met Gorbachev in 1989 in Rome and the two men smiled like Cheshire cats throughout – and, according to one biographer, discussed Gorbachev’s granny’s devotion to the Virgin Mary. Who says miracles don’t happen?

We need one now. It’s far from over, but I wonder if a miracle isn’t already happening in the person of Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The son of academics, he studied law, then became an actor and comedian. He even played the part of Ukraine’s leader in a comedy series called Servant of the People. And he’s a “Strictly” champion to boot. Somehow, through sheer force of personality and highly effective use of social media, he has emboldened his fellow citizens to stand firm. The spirit of this place Putin calls a “non-entity” is indescribably moving. Grandmothers making Molotov cocktails in the park, a whole village of unarmed men placing themselves between their homes and a Russian tank, gentle young men and women with no war in their hearts joining up all the same. Sadly, Vladimir Putin is no Gorbachev. There is no Raisa to tenderise the heart of a man so incurvatus in se that he does no good, sees no good.

Some years ago, I accompanied Mark McGreevy of Depaul International and Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow of Mary’s Meals to the city of Kharkiv on the eastern border with Russia, where some of the fiercest fighting has taken place.

I found a city with all the hallmarks of its recent Soviet past. Huge, imposing public buildings, gigantic statues of Lenin and, further out, endless rows of plain, uniform blocks of flats where people had been allocated homes under the Soviet system. That was over now but its psychological and social echo hummed all around.

The people Depaul was helping were often teenagers whose parents for one reason or another hadn’t coped with the freedoms we so readily champion. For some, freedom meant disorientation and failure. For their children, it often meant much worse. Abandonment. The youngsters I met had fled state orphanages and now lived on the streets. They slept down manholes to keep warm and clung to gangs to stay safe. Sex was traded and Depaul was developing places of safety for such children.

One of those I met in Kharkiv was Fr Vitaliy Novak. On my show last week, he said something so simple and beautiful. He tells the homeless people being helped by Depaul that every “Good morning” means one more day in a free country. That message is now so much harder to deliver. But Fr Vitaliy is still saying “Good morning” every day, so that even war won’t take away the dignity of someone being there, even for the most vulnerable.

John Paul spoke about Divine Providence leading him, a Slav who had survived Nazism and Communism, to the papacy. His message to his fellow Poles was “Do not be afraid”. I have no doubt the Spirit he cried out for in Warsaw’s Victory Square in 1979 has now descended on Kharkiv and is coursing through the brave men, women and children of Ukraine. May they prevail.

Shelagh Fogarty is a radio and television presenter and journalist.