My year of running from Putin

What a difference 12 months makes. Last year, at the Ikea in Rostov-on-Don, South Russia, I splashed out on some especially good Christmas decorations. I had an eight-year-old, half-Russian daughter growing up in that city, and wanted a tree and lights that were made to last and could be brought out each December as a kind of ritual.  

Just over two months later, as Ikea closed its doors following Putin’s war, I took the decorations out and chucked them in a skip. My daughter had fled for Italy with her mother, my ex-partner, and my four years in Rostov – the cosy-melancholy city in which I’d planned to make a future – were over. There was no room for baubles or fairy-lights in my luggage, and not much to celebrate either.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, it was clear the party – Christmas or otherwise – was over.