In mid-February 2022, as Russian troops gathered on Ukraine’s borders, Ksenia Samotiy urged her family to leave. Three days before the invasion began, her parents decided her mother would take Ksenia and her two younger siblings out of the country “until things settled”. In a recent Sunday Independent article, she wrote that her “family exists now as a map rather than a household”. Coffee shops full, students gathered outside lecture halls, but also funeral processions that quietly stop traffic and a cemetery that has run out of space for the war . Today on The Indo Daily, Fionnán Sheahan speaks to Ksenia Samotiy about fleeing Ukraine, building a life in Ireland, and returning home to a country still at war.

Source: Irish Independent February 25, 2026 14:19 UTC