Olena Nikulina pauses, her eyes welling up

"I was thinking what would happen if I would receive a message that Maks has died, what would I do?", she says. "And I just started crying in the middle of the street because I don't have any answer to that."

We are sitting in the office of her volunteer centre in Kyiv, where boxes of supplies - food, medical kits and armoured vests - are being gathered to be sent off to Ukrainian forces on the eastern front: the epicentre of the Russian offensive.

Her sense of purpose is twofold: her nation and her family, with her 26-year-old cousin Maksim, or Maks for short, fighting in Mariupol.

The boy she grew up with, whom she describes as a kind and respectful engineering student, is one of the last remaining Ukrainian defenders holed up in the Azovstal steel plant in the city, somehow withstanding the ferocious firepower of one of the world's biggest armies.

Perhaps a couple of thousand soldiers and civilians are there, in the Cold War-era network of bunkers and tunnels, where food, water and time are running out. The last message she had from him was on 8 March.

"He never told us about the real conditions, probably he didn't want to upset us", she says. "But they have very little food and medical supplies - and it's harder and harder to treat wounded soldiers."

Growing up in Sumy, north-eastern Ukraine, Maks's mother - Olena's aunt - wanted him to join the army, calling it "a school of life for men".