Episode #24: From Russia with Love 🇷🇺 🇺🇦 🇹🇭

Who in the World

Imagine if you had to leave your country virtually overnight, your home, your job, your friends, most of your savings, and almost everything you owned? You needed to scramble to find a new, safe country for your entire family to live in and could only bring one suitcase with you – possibly never to return again.

Oh, and you couldn’t tell anyone about it or even let on that anything was out of the ordinary. One wrong step, one mistake, and you (and your entire family) would most likely be going to prison for ten years.

You just had to disappear completely from the only life you’ve ever known in the dead of night. Poof.

That was the situation when my guests today fled their homeland of Russia right after their government’s invasion of Ukraine. Guided by their conscience and torn by the censorship, militarization, and Soviet-era crackdowns they saw around them, their comfortable, modern life in Moscow evaporated almost overnight, descending into a dystopian nightmare.

Now, they are refugees, their future uncertain and not sure when or even if they’ll ever be able to return to their mother land.

Today on the Who in the World podcast, you’ll hear their story.

Having relocated to Thailand last month, I was chilling with my best buddy here, Scott, at a bar called the Red Brick. Sitting at a table next to us were two sisters from Russia and a few of their family members, and we all got to talking as they admired my friend’s pit bull. (Shout out to Frankie!)

The conversation turned to how long each of us had been living in Thailand where we were from, etc., and that’s when I first got to know them. Intrigued, I had to learn more, so I invited them back for dinner and drinks while they told me about their lives – this time with the microphone on.

Enjoy this podcast and after listening, I’m sure you’ll feel the same respect, admiration, and genuine care for them as I do.

-Norm Schriever

P.S. Names, places, dates, and details have been changed or omitted to keep the sisters and their family safe from retribution by the Russian government. Their security was our utmost concern, so everything you hear has been reviewed and approved by them.