Editor-in-Chief Nia Simeonova speaks to Christopher Sharp – a British journalist and KCL alumnus – about radio, motorsports and his upcoming charity trip to Ukraine.
Christopher Sharp remembers hosting his breakfast radio show while watching the sun rise behind Tower Bridge. Back in 2017, when he was studying at King’s College London (KCL), student media offices used to be in the Macadam Building.
A few years later, Christopher would open the window of his lodging in Kyiv only to smell the “acrid, plasticky smell” of “the rockets and the missiles and the drones and the jet fighters”. But a sunrise over the Dnipro River is “also a celebration of survival”. “That is because in a warzone a sunrise means that much more than in times of peace,” says Christopher.
Now a journalist for the Daily Express, he is off to Ukraine to donate an SUV to communities suffering under the Russian invasion.
Christopher’s trip to Ukraine takes place almost three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022 and the start of the war. Over six million Ukrainians have already left the country since then. Three years in, the civilians who remain still need vehicles to help transport people out of dangerous areas and keep the lines of communication open. Now, Christopher, who has already travelled to Ukraine twice since 2022, is fundraising to help with the cost of the journey.
Time at King’s
Christopher graduated from KCL in 2019. Two words describe his time at university best: radio and motorsports. “The whole feel of King’s was a little bit more shabby than it is now if I’m being honest but the radio studio was impressive,” remembers the former War Studies and History student.
During his time at KCL, and for a while after that, Christopher hosted the Fast Friday Sport – a motorsports show with an innovative twist. “We were one of the first stations to have tried and broadcast our stuff live on Facebook”, says the journalist. Fast Friday even got the recognition of media professionals at the largest motorsport networking event in Birmingham.
“We were just a university radio station broadcasting out of London and we had people who were ten times bigger than us from different organisations going ‘We really like what you guys are doing down in London”.
Ukraine
Christopher’s interest in motorsports is what ultimately drove him to the decision to go to Ukraine. After volunteering with a pro-Ukranian charity for six months in 2022, Christopher started noticing all the vehicles that were being transported from the UK to Ukraine.
“‘Okay, right, all these British vehicles going over – what are they actually doing,” he asked himself. His curiosity was not satisfied until he went and saw for himself.
The first time Christopher went to Ukraine was as part of Pick-ups For Peace – a charity which has delivered over 500 vehicles to the country so far. His introductory trip was to the city of Lviv, located about 70 km from the border with Poland.
Kyiv
In the spring of 2024, Christopher felt ready to go further east and soon enough he ended up in the capital. “Everyday life is what attracted me to go to Kyiv and Lviv in the first place. In the UK always the majority of our press coverage is guns, bullets and bombs and I’m kind of like ‘Well, what’s underneath the guns, bullets and bombs?'”
On that trip, the journalist helped deliver an ambulance by the name of Amy and a bus named Bob to Ukrainian civilians. Bob was “only 500 quid but surprisingly made it all the way there”.
“I remember driving into Kyiv in this ambulance and being shocked because it was Friday night, 7 p.m. and the roads were jammed. It looked like London on a Friday night”, the KCL alumnus recalls. For Ukrainians, “it’s an example of defiance”.
Still, life in the Ukrainian capital is often beyond the wildest fantasies of most Londoners. “I remember the first night we got to Kyiv, there was an air raid siren, like out of World War Two movies, blasting across the city. The first time you hear it, it sort of hits you that you are definitely in a war zone.”
“The weird thing is that you get used to it. You see people sitting about having coffees and you gradually learn that the way you live in Kyiv… is if you’re on a night out, if you’re having a nice dinner and the air alarm goes off, if everyone else is finishing their wine and their shakshuka, you finish your wine and your shakshuka; if everyone else is going to the shelters, then you leg it to the shelters.”
Way forward?
As we near the tragic third anniversary of the start of the war against Ukraine, I wonder what Christopher’s predictions for the future are. “It’s a slow crawl towards an uncomfortable peace”, he says with a deep sigh.
As for current King’s students, Christopher’s advice is simple: “Follow your interests. When I briefly wanted to become a lawyer [and] I was quite stuck, I was asked by someone ‘What do you want to do in life?’ and the only answer I could come up with was: help.”
You can donate to Christopher Sharp’s GoFundMe campaign HERE. All donations will go towards covering the cost of the journey to Ukraine.
