28/05/2026
Memorable Days
Some days stay with you for your entire life. Your first kiss, your wedding day, the birth of your children… and sometimes, if you are lucky enough, you experience a day so full of contrast and emotion that it becomes permanently seared into your memory, as clear today as it was exactly four years ago.
May 28th 2022 is one of those days, and I would like to share some of that experience with you.
This was my first visit back to Ukraine after the full-scale invasion.
We started the day, as we had the day before, by stopping at a supermarket to buy supplies and prepare emergency food packs for families affected by the invasion in an area north of Kyiv that had only recently been liberated a few weeks earlier.
After two hours of sorting and packing these bags — carefully designed to support a small family for one week — we left central Kyiv and headed north, not far from the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone and very close to the Belarusian border.
The signs of conflict were everywhere around us. Destroyed bridges, torn-up trees, tank tracks, and evidence of war in every direction.
You all know the story of Olena and how we met, so rather than repeating it again, I want to share my memories through the photographs I took and try to give you a picture of how this day unfolded.
With little success finding people — many were still understandably nervous — we stopped at a small store to cool off and have an ice cream. Although it was still early, the day was already becoming hot beneath endless blue skies.
And there we saw first-hand the destruction that had been brought upon this small and otherwise unremarkable shop. Empty shelves, damage everywhere, and one elderly lady behind the counter who simply wanted to tell us her story.
And from this chance meeting started the long road to where we are today, because unbeknown to us at the time, this was Olena’s mother.
My next memory is arriving to what felt like being greeted by the entire village of Olyzarivka.
Again, this story has been told many times before, so instead I want to focus on what stayed with me.
Meeting Olena and hearing her stories of the occupation have remained vivid in my mind to this day. Seeing the cellar where her family sheltered from daily artillery and air strikes, feeling the lingering fear that it could all happen again, but most of all seeing her determination to help others who were still enduring the same experience.
We were taken to see her school, which had been badly damaged by an aviation bomb.
But after we said our goodbyes came the first great contrast of the day, as we set up camp at a nearby beauty spot and made ourselves a very late lunch.
The area we were in is called Polissia, well known for its beauty, something anyone who has visited Chornobyl will understand well. Sitting beside a perfectly still lake, eating heated beans and sausages while surrounded by complete peace and silence, was one of the strangest feelings imaginable.
The serenity of the location contrasted so sharply with the stories we had heard and the knowledge of what had happened there only a short time before.
Each of us sat quietly, processing the events of the day in our own thoughts.
On our journey back to Kyiv, we stopped at the site of a large armoured battle to see what remained there, and by chance there was also the most incredible sunset.
Looking back now, what I remember most vividly is the remains of war beneath a sky on fire.
Again, the brain struggled to process these completely conflicting experiences, and for the rest of the journey the car was unusually quiet.
And of course, to finish this extraordinary day, we shared a typical Ukrainian meal of borscht lovingly prepared by Nick’s mum and carefully transported all the way from Ulaniv to our apartment in Kyiv, along with shop-bought bread and cheese.
I wanted to share these memories and photographs partly because more than four years of full-scale war in Ukraine have now passed, with no real end in sight, and I sometimes worry we may find ourselves revisiting these memories again and again.
But also because only now do I truly feel comfortable sharing the emotional impact of that first aid mission.
I can say with certainty that my life divided into a before and after moment.
From that point onwards, I was a different person.
I saw the pain, the suffering, the hope, the defiance, and the strength of ordinary Ukrainian people — and once you have truly seen that with your own eyes, how can you simply turn your back on it?
I hope you understand my reasons for sharing this today.
I am not asking for anything other than your time — to read this, look at the photographs, and perhaps better understand why we do what we do.
