Outdoor snooker in Yerevan – Armenia 2 Wales 2 (2001)

MAX, the one-armed Armenian outdoor snooker supremo, was busy honing his skills as we strolled through Yerevan’s Victory Park.

Aged about 45, dressed in a blue shell suit and sporting three days’ bristle on his chin, he was the custodian of a tatty building with rotting timbers. Two pool tables stood on the grimy verandah.

This was Yerevan’s fabled outdoor snooker centre – a shanty town shack that looked ready to fall down.

A hundred yards away on top of a hill overlooking the city, a 100-foot high steel statue of Mother Armenia, surrounded by a tank, missile launcher and other armoured vehicles, stood sentinel over the capital.

The Road to Abovian – Armenia 1 Wales 0 (2001)

Crumbling tenements, potholes in all the roads, a delapidated stadium and some of the most lacerating poverty I’ve ever seen. It could only mean one thing. We were in the back of beyond watching the Welsh under-21s again.

The Greatest Fans in the World hired a fleet of taxis for the 20-minute trip to Abovian – that’s Abovian, not Aberfan – to see if our boys could record their first win in howevermany matches it is (someone reckons it’s 16, but, like the u-21 players, none of us particularly care).

Poltava

From the top of the city’s Rotunda of People’s Friendship, this tribute to soldier can be see from a distance.

Up close, the mural is on the side of an eight-storey block of flats.

It features local lad Serhii Volynskyi, 31, who was one of the defenders of Mariupol, as commander of the 36th Separate Marine Brigade.

War games – Metalist 1925 Kharkiv 0 Vorskla Poltava 3

Well this one had war written all over it. Only thing missing was a Red Arrows flypast.

For starters, Metalist playing in their home city of Kharkiv risks bombs falling during the game without warning. So not much point playing there.

Here in Kyiv, sirens go off well before any cruise missile/Russian rocket hits the city. Most are shot down.

In Kharkiv, close to the border, you take your chances. One guy told me: ‘My friend there says that when they bomb he just goes to sit on the toilet and pray.’

Kyiv

The famous meme of a Ukrainian farmer towing a Russian tank away is immortalised in this central reservation tribute.

It’s at KPI, about a mile from the central station on the main route west out of town.

Pop art hotel, Uzhhorod

The art hotel in Uzhhorod is, almost literally, bananas.

I told my Kyiv friend Anya and she said write about it, so this is for her.

For £32 a night you get breakfast and a splash of glitz.

Kryv-bashed! – Vorskla Poltava 1 Kryvbas 4

Does president Zelenskiy’s magical mojo extend to the team from his home town? They played like it has.

The crew from Kryvi Rih came back from one down to thrash the hosts with a slick, confident display that took them to top of the table for 24 hours until Shakhtar’s 1-1 draw returned them to first.

Last time I visited Vorskla, you could throw snowballs at the substitutes when it got boring. This time it was 28 degrees Centigrade.

Die Fledermaus

Never too late to do something for the first time so it’s embarrassing to sample operetta this late in life.

Lviv National Opera being the perfect place to start.

Not a sell-out – ticket was 400 hrivna, about £9.

Lviv larks

Lviv’s lively street celebrations almost defy belief more than 550 days after Russia launched its crazed invasion.

Above, crowds gathered to banish the blues as a series of acts entertained citizens before the city suffered its first bomb attack shortly after I left for Kyiv.

Mr Arbitrium, Lviv

This chap looks like he’s propping up the Lviv National Opera by himself.

He’s actually a war-inspired work of art by an Italian artist.

He’s just in the bottom left hand corner here.

Football on the moon – Shakhtar Donetsk 1 Obolon Kyiv 0

It seemed like this was played on the moon, at any rate.

Obviously it wasn’t, just in case you were wondering. And there were no Clangers at this game. Honest. I went looking.

Ukraine Premier League (UPL) has been played behind closed doors since Russia’s invasion in February last year.

For Shakhtar, effectively evicted from Donetsk in 2014, it’s been life on the road ever since.

All you need is Lviv

Wednesday 8pm: It’s as if there is no war – Lviv is celebrating itself.

Crowds throng the half-mile long piazza in front of the city’s opera house under the watchful eye of national poet Taras Shevchenko, looking down benignly from his plinth, and probably delighted by the spectacle.

Children scamper through the ornamental fountain; old men play backgammon with an intensity you can almost smell; babushki gossip, flashing their immaculate dentistry; Roma children as young as four try to sell you flowers.

A couple snog on one bench – unusual to see that in Ukraine – a sozzled alcoholic straddles the next one. He looks like he’s making love to it.

A girl sporting a T-shirt with the slogan Killer Tits (not in Cyrillic) scoffs candy floss with her boyfriend; teenage schoolgirls watch the musicians raptly, clinging together and grooming each other’s long tresses.

And then there’s what can only be described as the best street musicians in the world providing defiance/joy/inspiration.