One of the PA’s most enduring images of 2022 was of an exhausted man holding a toddler on a cargo plane.
They were dad and daughter Duncan Spinner and little Ingrid fleeing Lviv on a windowless, unheated aircraft, bound for who-knew-what.
Duncan, who attended Strathallan School and spent part of his childhood playing in the hills around Pitlochry and Loch Tummel, had been working on a project for OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) in Ukraine when Russian forces invaded.
The British Embassy flew him out on an emergency flight and Duncan had to accept he might never see his Ukrainian work colleagues again.
When he got safely back to the UK, one of the first things he did was contact a fledgling group - Highland Perthshire Welcomes Ukraine - that was beginning to mobilise to get refugees a home and a host in Aberfeldy and surrounding settlements.
He came to talk to the town, bringing the most hands-on of information about the unfolding crisis.#
The PA contacted him again to see how he had fared in the past year and to see if his loyalty 365 days after the first siren was sounded was still to the people of Ukraine.
Duncan wrote back a few days ago: “Hello from Ukraine, my home since September 2015.
“This was the 12th conflict that I have been involved in, but the most personal.
“I fled from the war with my daughter. I returned to Highland Perthshire temporarily and reconnected with communities I haven’t seen in 34 years.
“My heart has been broken seeing places I lived in with friends being destroyed. Broken, listening to friends and colleagues sobbing on the phone as I tell them there is no home anymore and they need to flee.
“Broken, listening in shock to friends and colleagues telling me that they were glad Ukraine was finally getting what they deserved.
“Crying with joy when people, believed dead, emerged from basements and arrived in the office that I used to shelter.
“Exhausted dealing with traumatised colleagues unable to make effective decisions, yet resisting all advice and support.
“Frustrated with mothers and fathers of friends and colleagues refusing to leave Bakhmut, waiting to be ‘liberated’ by Russian forces.
“Heartbroken, at a funeral - I’ve been to many military funerals, this for the first time in my life the funeral of a child of a friend, killed in action.
“[I am] determined. I’m in Kyiv, speaking this week to Baltic forums on economic reconstruction and investments to ensure that Ukraine has the liquidity it needs to survive against Russia.
“I am here, looking forward to the future, until the end.”
