Hi, Katie.

Hey Dominic, how you doing?

I hear you've been singing for like 20 hours a day or something

this week. That sounds fun. Yeah, I need to work on my work-life balance, I think. Which is why there

was no podcast last week, but we're back with a special episode marking a year since Russia's

full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This war changed millions of people's lives overnight.

And this week we wanted to spend some time with just one person who has been through that.

Someone who's had everything from their work to their love life turned upside down in ways that they totally weren't expecting.

Valeria is an actress from Kiev.

On February 24th last year, she was starring in a TV show.

She was engaged to another actor.

And then weeks later, she found herself working as a translator in a war zone.

And that's actually how she met our producer, Katzlaslo, while they were reporting together

in Kiev last October.

This is the final instalment of our mini-series.

This is what a generation sounds like.

A series where we hand the microphone to young people across Europe to tell us about their

lives, in their own words.

And it's a co-production with Arwee Europe made in cooperation

with the Alliance Foundation. Here is Valeria's story. It begins with a voice memo she sent

Katz about a month ago. Today is January 23rd. Tomorrow it's going to be 11 months of the

full-scale invasion in Ukraine.

...