As he returns from visiting war-torn Ukraine, a stirring message from senior Tory LORD ASHCROFT 

A year ago, the southern Ukrainian city of Odessa had streets ablaze with festive lights, towering Christmas trees in its main squares, and a bustling population of nearly a million people. It was not for nothing that it was known as ‘the pearl of the Black Sea’.

Christmas 2022, ten months after the Russian invasion, is very different. Every night, Odessa descends into near-darkness because Russian missiles cut off its power.

When I arrived in the city five days ago, our car headlights pierced the moonless night and glimpsed ghostly figures waiting at bus stops. The silence is equally eerie and at 11pm the city, with its depleted population, goes to sleep: the strict curfew lasts until 5am.

However, after Ukraine’s recent successes on the battlefield, in particular the recapture of large areas of the Kherson and Kharkiv regions, its people are more optimistic than at any time since the Russian invasion on February 24. .

I traveled to this war torn country in Eastern Europe for two main reasons. First, to try to gain a better understanding of how the nation is coping after almost a year of all-out war; and secondly, to show my support for the people of Ukraine, who have earned my admiration for the way they face a terrifying test on a daily basis.

Make no mistake: the determination of Ukrainian men and women to defend their homeland is unwavering. They are fighting for their lives and their freedom.

Within an hour of my arrival in Odessa from the Moldovan border, I was at the humanitarian center that was set up to help residents of all ages with their own needs and those of front-line soldiers.

Here, I watched Natalia Pinchenkova, 49, and eight other women making camouflage netting, in different colors for fall, winter, spring, and summer, for the troops. “We must help our soldiers,” she said.

Polina Kolupaylo, 80, gave me one of the cushions she and other volunteers are making for frontline fighters and refugees. And I helped 37-year-old Ludmilla Nasarzevsky as she made candles from recycled trash mixed with paraffin to provide warmth and light for troops in the trenches on dark winter nights. ‘We want to help our heroes,’ she told me.

In a second-floor room, elementary school-age children were making Christmas decorations in a makeshift classroom. For two years, the covid interrupted his studies, and now a year of war has done the same. Everyone is tired of the war, but no one is willing to accept anything less than removing all Russian soldiers from Ukrainian soil, including from Crimea, which was forcibly annexed in 2014.

Oleksii Goncharenko, a Ukrainian parliamentarian from Odessa, married and the father of two children aged 16 and four, said: “I want a complete victory against Russia so we never have to go through this again.”

He said that the last ten months had taken a toll on everyone, including the children. ‘My four year old knows the difference between the sound of fire coming in and out. He says, “Don’t worry, daddy, it’s us shooting. We are safe.” No child should have to learn such things.

Some eight million people, mainly women and children, out of a population of around 44 million have left their homeland. But all men between the ages of 18 and 60 must stay behind to help the war effort, including many civilians who are being trained as front-line soldiers.

On my second day in Ukraine, I went to the port of Odessa, which had been paralyzed for five months after the invasion. Now the dock workers are busy loading wheat, barley, soybeans and other supplies onto giant cargo ships.

Under a July agreement between Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the UN, 174 ships have shipped 3.8 million metric tons of food from Odessa through a narrow maritime corridor to countries around the world. Two other ports can also export food.

Later that day I traveled to Mykolaiv, the southern port once famous for shipbuilding. In the first days of the war, it was almost completely surrounded by advancing Russian troops, but fierce fighting eventually forced the enemy to retreat.

Before the Ukrainians recaptured nearby Kherson last month, Mykolaiv was attacked by missiles and mortars almost every day. This killed 156 civilians and seriously injured nearly 300 more. Half of the city’s population of 500,000 fled, as did most of its big businesses.

Since the Russians were pushed back about 35 miles from Mykolaiv, the city has been attacked only twice. However, their water and electricity supplies have been severely affected, so residents, mainly the elderly, have to queue to collect drinking water from the 1,000-litre tankers carried by trucks.

However, even in Mykolaiv, the mood was upbeat. Alexander Senkevich, 41, the city’s mayor, told me: “Russia’s mistake was that they came here expecting to be greeted with flowers and flags.” [by fellow Russian-speakers in the south]. But instead of that, we greet them with weapons and [their] death.’

He added: ‘Little by little life will return to normal and our residents and our businesses will return. By next spring, the Russians will have eliminated Vladimir Putin.

Ukraine says it has killed 100,000 Russian soldiers since the start of the war and says morale among the ill-equipped invaders is low. ‘Half the Russian tanks move but can’t shoot and the other half shoot but can’t move,’ they jokingly told me.

The death toll in Ukraine is not disclosed. It is tall but, military sources insist, less than half that of its enemy.

Ukraine’s military predicts that Russia will try to push forward in the new year, after getting the go-ahead to increase its army from 1.15 million combat troops to 1.5 million. The signs are that Putin is preparing for a long conflict.

When Ukraine’s charismatic President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in the US last week to receive a promise of another $45bn (£40bn) in aid from the US, a military source told me : “We can and will end the war if they give us the ability [in weapons] by the West to do so.

On Friday, under the protection of an elite team of Ukrainian Special Forces, I and Conservative MPs Bob Seely and Chris Green were taken to the front line: the reclaimed city of Kherson.

We entered the city, but were prevented from going downtown because more than 60 shells were fired into now sparsely populated civilian areas. Throughout the day, a separate mortar battle raged on the outskirts of town with enemy forces only two miles away.

On the way to Kherson, we saw the magnitude of the devastation that the war has inflicted on civilians. The towns of Luch and Posad Pokrovsk, both near Kherson, were largely destroyed in bloody battles last month.

However, a handful of villagers are finally starting to return, and one resident even managed to decorate a Christmas tree outside his badly damaged house. Perhaps a moving image of hope for the future of the country?

During my visit, I met with Major General Andriy Kovalchuk, head of Operational Southern Command and the man credited with much of Ukraine’s battlefield success.

I told him: ‘My admiration for your troops knows no bounds. For the past year, the British Army has been training Ukrainian troops. After you win the war, the Ukrainian army will train the British troops. He gave a wry smile, but I think my prediction will come true.

• Lord Ashcroft KCMG PC is an international businessman, philanthropist, author and pollster. For more information on his work, visit lordashcroft.com. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook @LordAshcroft