The film has survival expert and ex-SAS trooper Bear Grylls in Ukraine, in the midst of a battlefield 25 years after leaving the military. Invited by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Grylls visits Ukraine, nearly a year after Russia’s invasion, and listens to the stories of Ukrainians who were affected by the horrors of the war and lost their loved ones but not their hope for the victory ahead.
“Bear’s goal is to meet Ukraine’s commander-in-chief in Kyiv, but before that, he needs to get to the capital and in a country at war that is not so straightforward. It’s a country that’s under constant threat from missile strikes and Russia is trying to plunge its neighbour into total darkness by attempting to knock out its energy infrastructure. This film is not just about meeting the president, it’s about Bear’s journey to reach Kyiv and what he sees on the way. During his trip he will meet the people of Ukraine who are trying to endure and survive this war, trying to understand what life is like for them.
It’s a journey like no other Bear has undertaken before. In this film, Bear is not the survival expert; his role is to learn from other people to see what they’ve been through. When meeting the president, Bear wants to understand who the man behind the public face of the presidency is. To see what life is like for him away from the podium. He will learn how Ukraine is surviving this war during this winter of darkness. The meeting does not take place in a formal presidential office setting.