With heavy heart I have to report that truly shocking and heart-breaking news continues to bleed out of Ukraine.

On the 17th July a missile was fired at civilian flight MH17 bringing it down inside the conflict region of eastern Ukraine. All 298 passengers and flight crew including 80 children on board perished.

I don’t even know where to begin with this, as a father with young children I am particularly sensitive the images of children’s belongings strewn across the wheat and sunflower fields.

This is a landscape I am very familiar with, I live and work in it, the images on TV might show what looks like another world but it is in fact the same one we all inhabit.
The ground war is dreadful, the indiscriminate bombing of civilians who didn’t ask for this, the confusion, the destruction, the broken shredded bodies, this is not a Ukraine I am familiar with.

Then bodies, body parts, bits of aircraft and private possessions started raining down out of the blue sky on to the innocent peasant villagers living below.
Villagers doing nothing more than anyone of us would be doing under the circumstances, just trying to live as best as we could and hope and pray that the distant thunder of guns pass us by.

This war is difficult to penetrate to be able to understand what is happening and I’m not going to try and explain it here today. What I will say is the downing of MH17 may have shifted the outcome of the war in to its final stages. I dearly hope it has.

As I write it seems although I cannot be sure that the Ukrainian forces are gaining ground and may have the upper hand.

How much the shooting down of MH17 has to do with this is speculation but I imagine that bringing the eyes of the world on to this squalid war must have some impact on those who find themselves in de facto charge.

One thing I am fairly certain as bodies remain unaccounted at the crash site and the war is passing over the wreckage destroying evidence, is it will not be forgotten.
I fully expect to see someone held accountable be it at the Hague or elsewhere be it next year or within in the next ten. This crime will not go uninvestigated.

This month I was hoping to bring you a story of my 2,500 mile road trip around Russia taking in  the crops, harvest and other sights of interest, if it’s alright with you I’ll put that off until the next blog.

Hug your children.