In January 2022, I packed up my Kyiv apartment after a five-year stint working and living in the country where my grandparents were born.

The Ukrainian capital was my second home. I could navigate the underground metro like a local, I knew where all the good cafes were and I had made friends for life – friends I was looking forward to visiting again in the future.

However, just a couple of weeks after leaving, the war began and changed everything.

In the weeks prior to February 24, 2022, Russian troops had been amassing at the border. While it was cause for concern, aggression from Ukraine’s authoritarian neighbour was nothing new.

By that point, Ukraine had already been fighting Russia-backed separatists in the eastern Donbas region for eight years.

It had endured Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, along with the bloody Euromaidan revolution that saw the overthrow of its former pro-Russian president.

Despite this hardship, Ukraine was a country with big plans for its future.........

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