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This Is Why

Ukraine War Diaries: EP32 - Limping into darkness, lost limbs & longing for Kyiv (Nov 7-11)

This Is Why

Sky News

News, Daily News, News Commentary

4.0552 Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2022

⏱️ 14 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In Kyiv, a sudden restaurant blackout forces Ilyas to consider the reality of winter in a city without power and increasingly isolated. 
Injured by an anti-tank grenade, Seva accompanies a close friend to one of Kyiv’s trauma units. 
Meanwhile, against the backdrop of conversations about a future evacuation, Oksana readies to return again to the Ukrainian capital.

OUR DIARISTS

Ilyas is an IT specialist and married father who fled from Kyiv to Lviv shortly after the war started. His wife Natalia, and two young sons are taking refuge in Poland.
As of November 2022, Ilyas is back living in the family apartment in Kyiv and working, in part, for the Ukrainian government on various IT projects.

Seva, 40, is a company CEO and husband to Oksana. Before the war, he travelled across Europe for business. Now, he makes regular supply drops of medical aid and rations to Ukrainian troops on the front line in Eastern Ukraine. He’s originally from a small village near Dnipro.

Oksana, 35, works in overseas education. She lives with her husband, Seva, in an apartment complex in central Kyiv and has remained in the Ukrainian capital since the war started. 
Many of Oksana’s closest friends have left the country to begin new lives in Europe. Some may never return. She’s determined to stay.

Ukraine War Diaries uses first-person audio, recorded on the ground in Ukraine, to give an intimate day-to-day perspective of life in a war zone.
 
EP32 diary entries were recorded using WhatsApp voice note.
 
From the producers of Sky News’ multi-award winning series – StoryCast.
 
Producer: Rob Mulhern
Editor: Paul Stanworth
Digital Promotion: David Chipakupaku

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Pain in my hip.

0:02.0

I keep feeling dizzy.

0:04.9

I'm getting migraines more often.

0:09.6

There's another way to contact your GP practice

0:12.4

by simply sending your symptoms and requests

0:15.2

through their website or the NHS app.

0:18.2

We're delivering an NHS fit for the future.

0:21.7

Tap it, type it, and we'll take care of it.

0:24.3

Julia, how do you spell vertebrae?

0:27.0

Oh, just tight pain in the neck.

0:29.9

You know, when Helen used to get home from work, I'd ask, how are you?

0:34.5

Fine, she'd say.

0:36.1

She clearly wasn't.

0:41.3

After 10 years in IT, she was on autopilot. Then she found this job, training up-and-coming tech wizas at the college, same skills but with

0:47.3

new people, new challenges.

0:49.3

Now when she gets back, I get the full debrief.

0:52.3

Can't get a word in.

0:55.1

Give your skills new life.

0:56.7

Train others.

0:57.8

Search jobs in further education.

1:01.6

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Sky News asked a group of Ukrainians to record diaries,

1:08.2

as war twisted both their country and their lives violently out of shape.

...

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