Labour then pushed ahead with it.

"People are literally walking in with their phones, particularly if English isn't their first language, and they're holding up pictures or showing us reels and saying: 'I want this'."Customers pay anything from £3.20 for a plain croissant to £4.50 for "limited edition" bakes - prices which David accepts are outside of the bracket of "everyday products".

But he said between the ingredients, paying for his "quality" staff and making a profit, margins were "very small"."Wages have increased quite dramatically just recently and that does translate straight to the prices that we have to pass on to the customer," he said."Running a food business is incredibly challenging."

So what is it about flaky baked goods that makes people part with their hard-earned cash?Food and travel writer Ross Clarke said he believed that even in a cost-of-living crisis, people were inclined to splurge on small luxuries.

It is a concept known as the lipstick effect, which suggests that people are more likely to buy small luxury items - like lipstick - during economic downturns.

"I think people are more inclined to maybe shell out £4.50 for a pain au chocolat if it's something special, because it's that little treat," he said.The potential dangers are the same, whether in Mariupol or Melitopol, seized by Russia in the full-scale invasion in 2022, or in Crimea which was annexed eight years before.

Mavka chose to stay in Melitopol when the Russians invaded her city on 25 February 2022, "because it is unfair that someone can just come to my home and take it out".She has lived there since birth, midway between the Crimean peninsula and the regional capital Zaporizhzhia.

In recent months she has noticed a ramping up of not only a strict policy of "Russification" in the city, but of an increased militarisation of all spheres of life, including in schools.She has shared pictures of a billboard promoting conscription to young locals, a school notebook with Putin's portrait on it, and photos and a video of pupils wearing Russian military uniforms instead of the school outfits - boys and girls - and performing military education tasks.