Yan Bakhmut’s assignment to Ukraine’s only research base in Antarctica is almost over, but the home he left has been destroyed
Yan Bakhmut was 15,500km miles away from his home in the western Ukrainian city of Kharkiv when the Russian invasion began. Working as a geophysicist at the Vernadsky Station, Ukraine’s only research base in Antarctica, he has watched the horrors of the war unfold from an agonising distance.
Now his year-long assignment to the remote outpost is nearing its conclusion and he faces the bitter task of returning to Europe and a country that has changed forever.
