Maria Romanenko and Jez Myers tell their remarkable story of attempting to escape Ukraine – plus a Q&A chaired by Chris Warburton
Chaired by BBC Radio 5 Live broadcaster and journalist Chris Warburton, How NOT to Flee a War is a conversation led by Ukrainian journalist Maria Romanenko and her partner Jez Myers, telling the story of their attempt to escape Kyiv as Russia launched its full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022.
What begins as a surreal morning of explosions and disbelief quickly becomes a frantic and uncertain decision: whether to stay, where to go and how to leave a city rapidly emptying under threat. Built around their real journey out of Ukraine, the talk uses personal storytelling and images from the road to show what the first days of invasion felt like from the inside.
Rather than a polished narrative of survival, Maria and Jez describe the experience with blunt honesty and dark humour – filled with endless traffic, exhaustion, panic, misinformation and the reality of borders under pressure.
The talk draws on Maria's perspective as a Ukrainian and Jez's perspective as a British partner caught inside the unfolding disaster. Together, they offer a gripping personal account and a wider reflection on displacement, resilience and what it means to lose your home overnight.
Stick around for a Q&A with Maria and Jez afterwards.
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