In the snows of 1854 a young Leo Tolstoy was transferred to the besieged city of Sevastopol. Clutching the rocky tip of the Crimean Peninsula, it had become the final bastion of Russian control on the Black Sea; encircled by French and Ottoman battalions, and the tenacious troops of the legendary British Light Brigade (later eulogised by Tennyson). Despite the cannon smoke, the crumbling defences and the ceaseless “thunder of the firing” that he found there, the great romantic still dubbed the city “beautiful” and “fine”; his work, the Sevastopol Sketches, became an enduring panegyric to this most Russian of Ukrainian towns.

Today, Sevastopol still seems to linger somewhere in the void between Europe and Russia, uncertain of its identity and indifferent to the looming spectres of that Black Sea fleet. It’s a place where statues of Lenin lurk anachronistically over sun-splashed promenades, fashionistas strut between the coffee bars of the waterfront, gorgeous neo-classical facades converge around museums, Sevastopol tour guides reveal the endless feats of military prowess from the tips of Mount Sapun, and excellent beaches cluster beneath the cliffs all around town.