When Melinda Simmons packed a punchbag among her baggage to take up her first ambassadorship in Kyiv four years ago, she had no idea the use it would get. Ukraine then was a country best known for wheat production, corruption and surrogate babies and had just elected a comedian as president.
“I imagined pitching innovative new trade initiatives,” she says, laughing, “and thought it exciting having a new president untested in government and politics.”
Instead she found herself at the centre of the biggest war in Europe since 1945 and watched as the president, Volodymyr Zelensky, became a worldwide hero. She also got through three British prime ministers, a pandemic and six bottles each of nail varnish in the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian
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