One year after Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, Vladislav Davidzon, European culture correspondent for Tablet Magazine, shares what he’s witnessed as a war correspondent on the frontlines, and predicts the future for his beloved country and the Jewish community he's proud to call home.  We last spoke to Davidzon hours before the Russia-Ukraine war began, when he was on the ground in Kyiv – listen now to his dispatch a year on, as he joins us live from our New York studio. *The views and opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect the views or position of AJC. ___ Episode Lineup:  (0:40) Vladislav Davidzon ____ Show Notes:   Read: What You Need to Know About the Wagner Group’s Role in Russia’s War Against Ukraine Preorder: Jewish-Ukrainian Relations and the Birth of a Political Nation    Watch: Kiyv Jewish Forum: Ted Deutch, AJC CEO, Addresses Kyiv Jewish Forum 2023 Panel: Ukraine as the Israel of Europe with Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, Managing Director of AJC Europe, Bernard Henry Levi, philosopher, and Josef Joffe, Stanford University   Listen:  Podcast episode with Vladislav Davidzon, recorded February 23, 2022:  Live from Kyiv: The Future of Ukraine and its Large Jewish Community Our most recent podcast episode: How Rising Antisemitism Impacts Jews on College Campuses   Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod   You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org   If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, tag us on social media with #PeopleofthePod, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review, to help more listeners find us. ______ Transcript of Interview with Vladislav Davidzon: Manya: On February 24th, 2022, just hours before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, Vladislav Davidzon, founding editor of The Odessa Review and contributor to Tablet Magazine, joined us live from Kiyv to share the mood on the ground as Russian forces were closing in. Now, one year later, Vladislav joins us again, this time in person, in our studio to share what he has seen, heard, and experienced this past year since the Russian invasion of his home. Vladislav, it is so good to see you alive and well and in person. Vladislav: Thank you so much. This is so surreal. I'm so grateful, first of all, for your interest, for your affection, for your graciousness, for your respect. But I'm grateful to be here exactly one year later. It was the last thing that I did in the workday before the war began, before the old world ended. And I went off to dinner with my friend, now of blessed memory, Dan Rappaport, who was an American Latvian born Jewish financier. It was also the last time I saw him. He died under very suspicious circumstances. He died falling out of a window in Washington, DC, or of a roof, on the seventh floor, three months later. I just have extremely intense emotions about that six hour period because…I was talking to my wife, my wife's French Ukrainian, she was back in Paris. I said, if anything happens tonight, I'll call you in the morning. Things are gonna go down tonight. And then I did this podcast with you. And so, it's really amazing to be back with you a year later. Manya: Yes. I mean, I  am so grateful to see you because I really was very worried. I worried that that was going to be our last conversation, and that I would not get a chance to meet you in person after that. And in addition to everything, you've been working on a book, The Birth of a Political Nation, which we'll talk a little bit more about shortly. But, first tell me, tell our listeners how you have managed to survive and tell the stories that need to be told. Vladislav: It's not pretty. I mean, it's just, it's not elegant. I'm a Ukrainian Russian Jew, so I kind of went into primordial, bestial mode, like Russian Ukrainian, Jewish survival mode, like my grandfathers and great-grandfathers during World War II. I just, you know, someth