“My friend Bogdan, an invaluable guide in his war-torn Ukraine”

ODESSA – I had just boarded the train for Kiev, leaving the sirens of Lviv and a city whose beauty had been spared. Twenty-first March 2022, 11.22. The train had just left the station, while news arrived that the convoy that had come down from the capital, crammed with fleeing refugees, had its windows shattered: the Russians had machine-gunned them, forcing the travelers to throw themselves to the ground in the corridors.