763: The Other Mr. President
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from WVZ Chicago. It's a American life. - Hey, is that Richard? - Yeah, it is Ira. - Yes, hi. The day Russia invaded Ukraine Thursday. At the very end of the day, I reached Richard Ensor. Ukraine corresponded for the economist. He'd started the day in the capital, Keve. And it's been much of the day traveling. - I've got you on speaker phone. I've just moved into my safe house. - What do you mean by safe house? - Well, I'm in Lviv. Close to the Polish border. And in January, I came here and I rented a flat for three months on the off chance that, or hell broke loose and there wasn't a spare, there wouldn't be a spare flat in Lviv available. 'Cause this is the place that everyone was going to run. - Wow. - And so I've had this sort of set of keys in the back pocket of just waiting in case catastrophe strikes and catastrophe struck. And so, now when I'm tired and after one of the longest days in my life, and you're coming home at 2 a.m., I've got a place to lend my hand. - That's incredible that you ended up having to use it and that you are using it. - I caught up a rental agency and they asked me what color I wanted the bricks to be. And I was just thinking, I hope I never have to see these walls. So just give me what you got. - With him was a woman that he met on the train who needed a place to stay before grabbing another trained Poland. The consequences of talking to the Western press are not queer, so she asked me to call her Natalie here in the radio. She's an English teacher, 25, a Ukrainian who grew up a few hours from Kiev, but moved to the city five years ago. And when she told me the long, frightening journey she had made that day, escaping the city while the Russians invaded, it wasn't one of those war stories where you think, oh, I can't imagine what it would be like to go through that.
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