WHEN Adam Carrington was living in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, he often enjoyed playing chess with his friends.
Little did they know that the online version of the board game would soon serve as a much-needed distraction from the sound of bombs being dropped on their city.
And although Adam had managed to escape Ukraine by this point, he was afraid for his friends who were now trapped in a much bigger strategy game with much deadlier consequences.
Up until mid-February, the Johnstone writer had been living in the country for around two years before Russia started amassing its troops close to Ukraine’s border.
A few weeks before the invasion, Adam decided he would film a documentary to showcase what was happening on the ground.
He told The Gazette: “Around Christmas time, it seemed apparent that something very serious was going to happen but we didn’t really know in what form it was going to take.
“There was a reporter who was looking for a Scottish person living in Kyiv to talk to and most of the interview was spent trying to explain to him about what was happening in Ukraine.
“After this experience, I thought it would be good to put together a resource that I could put on the internet and share with Western journalists, so they could be suitably informed before writing their pieces about the country.”
Adam jumped into filming his first documentary over the course of three days, between February 2 and February 12, while still working full-time as an English language teacher in Kyiv.
The 32-year-old said: “I interviewed people that I personally knew, who had interesting things to say and were voices I wasn’t hearing from Western media outlets.
“For instance, I spoke with a woman with had a background in Crimea and another friend of mine from Donetsk, who had changed his mind regarding the separatist situation in the east.
“I thought that if I could bring these voices out, then it would help try and humanise the situation a little bit.”
Towards the end of the filming, it became clear to Adam that Russia was intending to carry out an attack on Ukraine and it was time to leave the country.
The former Gryffe High pupil said: “My intuition told me something bad was going to happen. I suspected it could be an invasion that would to be bloody and difficult, and I would just be getting in the way.
“I decided I would quit my job, take a long holiday and wait for things to cool down.”
On February 13, Adam took a bus to the country’s border with Poland and was staying with his dad on the Caribbean island of Tobago when Russia invaded Ukraine 11 days later.
Adam said: “When the war broke out and there were pictures of grandmas taking out drones by throwing jars of cucumbers at them, that wasn’t surprising to me.
“It was a beautiful, proud moment to see that the Ukrainians hadn’t changed, as they are a really strong people.
“However, it looked for certain that Russia was going to blow Ukraine off the map during the first weeks of the invasion, as it was just carnage. I was very scared about what was going to happen to my friends.
“A good friend of mine called Yulia Zaparia, who is in the documentary, was in a bomb shelter in Kyiv when it got really bad. When she came out the next day and saw the destroyed buildings in her neighbourhood, she couldn’t believe it was real.
“Everybody that I have met in the last two years has now either become a refugee, been drafted into the armed forces or joined the humanitarian efforts. Nobody I know has a normal life anymore.”
However, Adam’s morale would be boosted when he arrived back in his hometown in March and saw firsthand the solidarity being shown towards Ukraine.
He said: “It was pretty incredible to see the Ukrainian flag flying when I got off the train in Johnstone.
“It really touched me to see people here taking the situation to heart and being able to share this with my friends back in Ukraine, as it showed that the world hadn’t forgotten about them.”
Adam believes his documentary captured a unique time in history that shows the prelude to the war in Ukraine from the perspective of its citizens.
He said: “It was made before the invasion of Ukraine began, with the idea of providing information that wasn’t riddled with propaganda and getting the truth out there.
“My original target audience was journalists but towards the end of the documentary it becomes a bit more personal, as I realised that I couldn’t divorce myself from what was happening in this situation.
“Now the documentary is more for posterity and to show a moment in time.”
Adam is now determined to return to the country that he fell in love with several years ago once it is safe to do so.
He said: “I fully intend to return to Ukraine after the war is over because I’m desperate to see the friends I have there who couldn’t leave.
“Some are living in very dangerous places and I really hope I see them again, as well as the cities that I love.
“I really want to walk down those streets and know that the people there are safe and the war is over.”
Adam’s documentary ‘All Of This Is Precious’ and his other projects can be found at www.instagram.com/admcarrington.
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