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Hello and welcome to a rather special edition of Coffee House Shots. I'm Cindy you

and I'm joined by Spitalana Morinets, the editor of our Ukraine newsletter.

Now yesterday, President Zelensky left Ukraine for the first time since the

evasion started to go visit the White House and he gave a speech to which he received a standing

ovation. Spitalana, you're in Ukraine now, though I saw you in a week ago in our London office.

Before we get on to the politics of the matter, I mean how has it been traveling back to see

your family for the first time because of what else since February? Well it was quite the

challenge because right now there are no direct flights to Ukraine because of the war.

So I had to travel to Poland from Poland to one city on the border and then take a lot of trains

and buses to get my hometown. So I spent like five days doing that but it's so nice to finally be

back home and to see how I wouldn't say that everything changed but you cannot

just have different Ukrainians leave right now here and what a heavy life they have right now

without electricity, heat and water. It's very heavy. Yeah and you've come back to see your parents

and your younger brother how is life different now to when you left? People try to adapt to the war

and for me it sounds horrible because I mean you shouldn't adapt to a war but they try to keep

to make their lives keep going you know because anyway they have to leave and try to find

a little happiness and every day and as my mom said every evening when the day passes she thinks

of we survive this day and they're so glad and she says hopefully we will survive tomorrow.

So they don't build plans for the future they try just to leave from one day to another day.

...