The Nagorno-Karabakh region which had been quiet for the last decade recently boiled over again when Azerbaijan mounted an attack which led to it conquering much of the territory it had lost in the previous war.
We all know about Tallinn the vibrant capital of Estonia with its tech start-ups and modern infrastructure. It's lauded as a miracle of the post-Soviet sphere and rightly so. But what about the rest of the country?
In 2014 the Ukrainian part of the Donbass erupted into war. Separatists from the Lugansk and Donetsk regions took up arms and took control of Ukrainian towns all along the eastern region of the country.
Doing the simplest of tasks like popping to the shop for a loaf of bread is no simple thing in Kryvyi Rih. That's because it's seemingly the longest city in the bloody world.
Greetings from beautiful Ukraine. Myself and my bodyguard Johhny FD left the capitol city Kyiv on a provincial adventure to the town of Pereyaslav in search of a Soviet Cosmic church I had tried and failed to visit last winter.
When myself and Johnny met a woman on a bus who told us of the mythical village of Sofiivka, a place supposedly full of fair village maidens all searching for husbands, we decided that we would have to travel there and investigate.
The Trans-Siberian train, who hasn't dreamt of taking it across this leviathan of a country? Well not me to be honest but somehow I decided to override my dread of endless train rides to show you what nobody has shown you before.
Under Stalin the G.U.LAG ( Main Administration of Camps ) system spread out across what was the former Soviet Union, swallowing up citizens and foreigners from all corners of the empire.
We have all heard of the Trans-Siberian, Russia's mega train journey that crosses Siberia as it skirts the Chinese border. But few have heard of the even more impressive B.A.M ( Baikal Amur Mainline ).
Since Lithuania gained it's independence in 1991 it has removed as much of its Soviet past as it possibly could unlike in other post-Soviet republics where there are constant reminders of the USSR around every corner.
As the USSR entered its final stages, law and order began to break down and there began a period which has since been called the period of 'Bandit Capitalism'.
If you look at a detailed map of Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia you will see some strange shapes appearing in the very south of the country. These are the Soviet formed exclaves belonging to both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
Who could have predicted the horrors which were about to befall on Ukraine. I went there like so many others thinking an agreement would be reached at the last moment. Alas.
With reports that the city of Kyiv was soon to be closed off I decided the best thing to do was to join the crowds and leave for the border before being stuck.
