Nadia Dobrianska: 'Ukraine is our home, and Russia will never take it from us'

12 months after that sleepless night on which Russia began its illegal invasion of Ukraine, Nadia Dobrianska, now living in Cork, takes stock of the worst year of her life 

Nadia Dobrianska at her host home in east Cork

On 24 February last year, I woke up at 3am in my bed in a rented apartment in central Kyiv. I had been struggling with insomnia because of the mounting evidence that the Russian all-out invasion of Ukraine was imminent. 

I lay in the dark imagining what it would be like when Russian missiles come crashing into my house. After two sleepless hours, I read Putin’s declaration of war on Ukraine, which he called a ‘special operation’. I immediately rang my parents to tell them that the all-out war had begun.