Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, is unlikely to have given up his ambitions to seize Kyiv after losing the battle for the city this spring, Britain’s ambassador to Ukraine warned as she returned to work in the wartime capital.

Melinda Simmons, who has moved back to Kyiv despite Russian threats against diplomats based there, said it was “overwhelming” to be back in a city that she once feared she might not see again.

“I wasn’t sure I’d make it back to Kyiv, so coming back is an extraordinary thing,” she said in her first interview from the capital since evacuating the embassy in February. “It absolutely feels like the right place to be.”

Simmons drove into the city from western Ukraine late on Friday, a journey along a highway battered by some of the most brutal Russian assaults. The charred remnants of destroyed buildings that line miles of highway are testament to the intensity of the fighting.

“It’s helpful to drive because you get a real sense of what was going on … and it’s truly shocking. But what is equally extraordinary is to see how Ukraine kept Russia out of Kyiv. Every way in which Ukraine has been able to do that is a thing to to celebrate and to treasure.”