Russia has been the central focus of Sarah Rainsford’s life ever since she first started learning the Russian language as a schoolgirl. After university she worked for BloombergBloomberg before joining the BBC World Service where she worked as a production assistant and then producerProducers in the Russian Language Service. From there she went to Moscow as a producerProducers, moving on to reporting after a couple of years. In Russia, Sarah covered the start of President Vladimir Putin’s time in office, as well as reporting on Chechnya. After 9/11 she worked in AfghanistanAfghanistan and Iraq before taking up a posting in Turkey. Spain followed and after that Cuba, but Sarah always hankered after Russia, eventually returning as a Moscow Correspondent in 2014. Sarah loved this job, staying until 2022 when she was suddenly barred from re-entering the country for “security reasons”. Since then Sarah has worked as the Eastern Europe correspondent, spending most of her time covering the war in Ukraine.