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entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. Friday the 17th of January 2025, Patrick, it's day one of our return to Ukraine.

We're actually heading on a bus from Kizinau, the capital of Moldova, into

southern Ukraine, and eventually Odessa is where we plan to get to later today. I flew in yesterday.

You came in the day before. What have you been up to, Patrick, since you arrived?

I just want to say something about the landscape. We're driving through. through is quite sort of um it's got a kind of very balk and feel to it

doesn't it's all it's got it's quite drab it's a bit of an overcast day unusually for moldova

which boasts of enjoying 300 sunshine days a year this isn't one of them yeah well yesterday i met up

with julius who listeners will know julius stra, who's a great friend of the podcast.

And Julius and his partner Kim had spent the day in Transnistia, which is the separatist region of eastern Moldova, more or less controlled by the Russians.

And so I had a conversation with him last night and he told me what they'd seen

and experienced on their trip. And give us a little bit of an insight into what's happening there,

Patrick via Julius. Listeners will probably be aware that it's effectively been cut off from its gas

supplies since the turning off of the tap coming through Ukraine.

So what is happening there?

Well, as Julius will explain, this is, of course, energy and gas in particular has been

used as a weapon by Russia to try and, A, destabilize Moldova and to support their people

in Trans-Denistria.

...