Four years of war in Ukraine and finding safety in Cork, with Liudmyla Bortok

The Deirdre O'Shaughnessy Podcast · Feb 24, 2026 · 42m

‘On 24th of February, 5 in the morning, I woke up because my neighbours were screaming and I heard like, “It started! It started!”‘I looked out of the window and I saw explosions. I was in Kyiv at the time and I saw explosions going around... you could hear explosions, and people were rushing for the apartments to the parking spot we had, and just packing their bags, kids, all they had, pets, and just leaving immediately. ‘It took me 30 hours just to get away from Kyiv on that day.’ It’s four years today since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It was a day that changed the course of…