Welcome back to Doomsday Watch. I'm Arthur Stahl. We've reached the end of this third season and thank you for sharing the journey with me.

Together we've been through drone wars, climate crisis in the Sahel and the Arctic, not to mention the conflicts in the Middle East and political chaos in America.

But from the first episode to this last, everything has been happening in the shadow of the war in Ukraine.

In episode one, we spoke about a world collapsing into chaos, and we heard from Ukrainian journalist Romeo Cockriatsky about the lived experience of war.

Here's Romeo describing the moment he decided to leave his Kyiv home.

Things change once you actually hear the booms of air defense systems.

At the time, there was no way to tell how effective the Russian siege of Kyiv was going to be.

So after kind of two days of hearing these far off explosions and they weren't even that far off, they were a couple of dozen kilometers north of us at best.

We just packed up all the stuff that we were going to take and then boarded literally the first train going west.

We didn't care where exactly it went. The station was actually shaking because the explosions had gotten close enough.

We didn't look at a schedule or care about what train was going where we just need to get as far away from Kyiv as possible.

What this year has taught us above all is that Ukrainian people will not be defeated.

Despite even the war, Ukrainians are pretty fiercely optimistic about the future.

Everyone constantly talks about their plans. Whatever it is, people believe in a future I think maybe for the first time in decades.

Like Romeo, we also want to look to the future with hope.

What does this mean for Ukraine, for Russia and for Europe?

As we ask how, after Ukraine, we can remake the world.

You know, knowing that I'm not alone, bringing people, fighting so hard, if we're ready to survive, if we're ready to have a ride to exist as an independent free democratic state,

that's what just gives you strength and strength.

I'm Arthur Snap. I was a diplomat in some of the most troubled places on planet Earth,

and now I'm here to investigate the threats of today and warn you about the dangers of tomorrow.

This is Doomsday Watch.

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