In the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, author and podcaster Viv Groskop found herself dreaming of a train trip she made as an undergraduate in 1994. The three-day journey took her from St Petersburg, where she’d spent frozen months grappling with Russian grammar as part of her study year abroad, to the Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, where a guitarist she’d fallen for had promised to take her on tour with his band, “Ukraine’s answer to the Red Hot Chili Peppers”. When the train finally crossed the border, it was fields of sunflowers that greeted her, “a glorious blur of yellow against the blue of the sky, like a firestorm”.
