People in the Ukrainian capital are trying to live normal lives, but balancing that with caution.

That's according to Newstalk presenter Sean Moncrieff, who spent last week in Ukraine talking to locals ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion.

He said the city is doing what it can to keep normality.

"People are attempting to live normally, but balancing that with a bit of caution," he said.

Sean Moncrieff in Kyiv, Ukraine. Picture by: Newstalk

"They're still going about their business, the street lights there were repaired in December.

"At night-time it looks kind of normal, even though there's still a curfew in place.

"You could still feel a growing sense of anxiety there last week, in the build up to this week."

Some of the damaged buildings in Kyiv, Ukraine. Picture by: Newstalk

Sean said the situation can change from week to week.

"The week we were there, there were seven or eight alerts that we experienced," he said.

"It was relatively calm: the Friday before we arrived, people had been in shelters for seven hours because there'd been a full-scale rocket attack.

"It can vary from week to week.

"The people who live in Kyiv, the people who live in Ukraine never know what each day is going to be like.

"One of the alerts we experienced came in the middle of the night, which apparently is very unusual - that hasn't really happened before.

"A lot of Kyivans we were speaking to thought maybe that's an indication of what might be to come over the next few days and weeks".

Travel

Sean said that anxiety took 'physical shape' during an overnight train to Poland.

"The train we took was actually one of dozens," he said.

"There was essentially a convoy of trains out of Poland last Friday night.

"When we got close to the Polish border our train was stuck in a queue of trains - we were actually six hours late getting in - because Polish passport control was pretty much overwhelmed with Ukrainians.

"Once you get over the border... the amount of military presence in Poland is very striking".

'A city at war'

Sean said it all felt very surreal.

"It's a city at war, but the shops are open," he said.

"It has excellent restaurants, we visited many of them.

"We went to a comedy gig, we went to a music gig.

"You also got the very strong impression that the people there, they need that normality.

"It had been said to us that it became the pattern that whenever a bomb fell, and there was damage done, that people would go out on the streets to clean it up as quickly as possible because they wanted things to be back as soon as possible - or as normal as they could make it," he added.

For more on Sean’s week in Kyiv, go to newstalk.com/moncrieffinukraine