Sarah Ferguson relaunches her YouTube storytime series after a two-month hiatus with a video sending support to children in Ukraine and Afghanistan
- Duchess of York relaunched Youtube show Story time with Fergie and Friends
- Fergie, 62, went on a hiatus on January 10, promising to come back soon
- She read Beautiful World, Beautiful You By Erika Peterson for World Book Day
- Dedicated the episode to children in Ukraine and Afghanistan amid conflict
Sarah Ferguson has returned to her online show Story time With Fergie and Friends to show support to the children of Ukraine.
The grandmother of August, one and Sienna, born in September, who took a break from her show on January 10, read Beautiful World, Beautiful You in a video she shared on her Youtube channel for World Book Day.
Fergie started the series during lockdown in 2020, reading children’s books and interviewing authors, but stopped for two months earlier this year.
Surrounded by sunflowers, the flower of Ukraine, and donning a blue and yellow cardigan reminiscent of the Ukrainian flag, the mother-of-two, 62, dedicated the episode to the children of Ukraine and the children of Afghanistan.
This comes as as Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, at Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine, was attacked by Russian troops overnight as the conflict enters its ninth day and shows no sign of stopping.
Meanwhile, Fergie’s ex-husband Prince Andrew, 62, has been keeping a low-profile since he reached an out-of-court settlement with accuser Virginia Roberts, who was suing the Queen’s son in New York for alleged sexual abuse after she claims she was trafficked by his friend and convicted sex offender Jeffery Epstein. Prince Andrew vehemently denied these claims.
Sarah Ferguson has returned to her YouTube show Storytime with Fergie and Friends and sent a message of support to the children of Ukraine
‘I’m so excited, I’m so excited, I’m back,’ Fergie said during the video, shared on her Youtube channel last night.
The Duchess of York said that from now on, she’ll be hosting the show, with Little Red, the heroine of her own series of children’s books.
‘I decided that I would go make Story time with Fergie and Friends actually be ‘Little Red Story Time and Fergie and Little Red’s stories,’ she said.
Little Red, who wears a red and white dress, will be a real ‘bringer of joy and bringer of hope’ on the show, Fergie said.
Fergie hosted the show with a doll of the heroin of her children’s books series Little Red, and said she wanted to visit Ukraine to bring support
‘I know lots of people, mums and dads, aunts and grannies, grandpas, and all these children out there in the big world, they are all frightened,’ she said.
‘And there are so many different words on the playground. Words like “invasion” and it seems to be so much news,’ she added.
‘These poor children that are coming over borders, across boundaries and running away from some people that are not letting them be in their own homes and it’s very frightening,’ she added.
Fergie went on to address a message to the children in Ukraine and globally.
‘To the children of Ukraine, to the children of Afghanistan, to children globally, Little Red is here.
‘Little Red is here to say: “Come on, I know there are fears, I know that it’s really, really, really frightening, but together, if we just can be kind, if we can just talk to each other, if we can just smile”…’ Fergie said.
The grandmother-of-two donned a yellow and blue cardigan resembling the Ukraine flag, and decorated her set with sunflowers, which is the national flower of Ukraine
‘We want you to know that we’re here and we hear what you need.’
She went on to say that that she wants to visit Poland and Hungary, which border Ukraine, to help families and displaced children.
‘I was thinking, maybe you might need a torch, cause it gets so dark, so here is a little sun, and a solar torch,’ she said, showing a sunflower-shaped torch to the camera.
She said she hopes to deliver portable solar panel chargers so people can charge their electronic devices and stay in touch with their family via phone or computer.
‘If you would like you send a message, please do, if we can be of any help and whatever you wish, children, you tell us. Tell Little Red and we’ll come and see you,’ she said.
She added Little Blue, who is Little Red’s friends, would also be coming on the journey.
Fergie said she will host all upcoming episodes of Story time from Little Red’s Buttercup Cottage
She also explained she had created a story called Little Red visits Ukraine, where her heroine travels across the country looking for Sunflowers, the Bumble Bee and the Nightingale, which are all symbols of the Eastern European Country.
Ukraine war: The latest
- Fire at Europe’s biggest nuclear power station at Zaporizhzhia is put out after Ukraine accuses Russia of ‘nuclear terror’ in shelling the plant. Russian troops later take the reactors
- Diplomats from NATO, the EU and G7 will all meet in Europe today to discuss next moves to contain crisis
- Russia admits ‘limiting’ access to news websites including the BBC, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, independent Russian site Meduza and Germany’s Deutsche Welle, with Facebook blocked
- Russian lawmakers approve legislation providing up to 15 years in jail for any publication of fake news about the Russian armed forces
- Thirty-three people are killed as Russian forces hit residential areas, including schools, in the northern city of Chernihiv
- Russia and Ukraine agree to create humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians from cities
- Russian President Vladimir Putin says Moscow’s advance is going ‘according to plan’
- Senior US Republican senator Lindsey Graham calls for ‘somebody in Russia’ to assassinate Putin
- Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky calls for direct talks with Putin as the ‘only way to stop the war’
- Russian forces take the Black Sea port of Kherson as it appears Moscow is trying to cut Ukraine’s access to the sea
- US and EU offer temporary protection for Ukrainian refugees so far numbering more than 1million
- Russians pack trains out of the country to Finland, fearful that it is their last chance to escape the impact of swingeing Western sanctions
- Sanctioned Russian oil giant Lukoil calls for a halt to fighting in Ukraine, one of the first major domestic firms to speak out
- Russian tech giant Yandex warns it may default on its debt after it was suspended from trading on New York’s digital stock exchange
- The China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank suspends business with Russia and Belarus in a sign of their deepening pariah status
- Ex-Soviet states Georgia and Moldova – which borders Ukraine’s threatened south – apply to join the EU
- The Beijing Winter Paralympics opens with Russian athletes banned
Fergie also said she has made a hat out of flowers in a nod to another Ukranian custom.
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson has accused Russia of ‘threatening the security of the whole of Europe’ after Putin’s troops attacked the continent’s largest nuclear power plant overnight, sparking a fire that raged for hours before emergency crews were eventually allowed to extinguish it as Russian soldiers seized the complex.
Mr Johnson condemned the attack as ‘reckless’ after a phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky who branded it ‘nuclear terrorism’. Jen Stoltenburg, who is in Brussels today to meet with NATO allies, denounced attacks on all civilian infrastructure and said the fire at the plant underlined the need to end Putin’s war as soon as possible.
Russian troops had attacked the Zaporizhzhia plant in the early hours of Friday, with CCTV capturing a fierce gun battle between Putin’s men and Ukrainian defenders that sparked a fire in a six-storey training building just outside the main complex.
Moscow’s men then stopped firefighters getting to the building for several hours.
Eventually, emergency crews were allowed to go in and douse the flames before Russian troops moved in an occupied the site, which provides a fifth of Ukraine’s electricity.
The UN’s nuclear monitoring agency said that, fortunately, none of the site’s six reactors had been directly damaged and radiation levels remained normal. Three Ukrainian troops were killed defending the complex, Kyiv said.
Moscow has, predictably, attempted to deny responsibility for the attack, saying its forces had come under attack by Ukrainian ‘saboteurs’ while patrolling the plant, who then set fire to the building themselves.
Ukraine is home to three other active nuclear power plants, one of which is located 70 miles from the city of Mykolaiv which Russian forces have begun attacking after seizing nearby Kherson.
The other two active sites are located in the west and are not currently under threat, though that situation could change as the Russian attack branches out. Ukraine also has five sites which are out of action, including Chernobyl, but could still pose a risk if hit by shells.
President Zelensky said the attack on Zaporizhzhia could have caused a crisis equivalent to ‘six Chernobyls’ – referencing the fact that the modern-day plant has six reactors while the Soviet-era disaster affected only one – and called on Russians to end the fighting.
Nuclear experts told the BBC that attacks on Zaporizhzhia were ‘frightening’ but that any disaster caused by fighting would be similar to Fukushima in 2011 rather than Chernobyl in 1986.
Fukushima, in Japan, melted down after a tsunami cut electricity to the plant, disabling its cooling system. Chernobyl exploded after a training exercise gone-wrong caused an uncontrolled nuclear reaction.
Claire Corkhill, professor of nuclear materials at Sheffield University, told the corporation that the reactors at Zaporizhzhia now appear to be shutting down to remove the danger – which may have been Russia’s intention in attacking the plant.
Russia’s war against Ukraine is now entering its ninth day and shows no sign of stopping any time soon after talks between the two sides yesterday broke up without agreement, before Vladimir Putin went on TV to declare that he would keep battling for ‘total victory’ whilst spouting propaganda that Russia’s forces are not deliberately targeting civilians and that the ‘special operation’ is proceeding on time with all of its major objectives completed to schedule.
Mykolaiv, a city to the west of Kherson which is now under Russian control, came under attack on Friday morning with the mayor saying troops had moved into the outskirts. Mykolaiv is located along the road to Odessa, Ukraine’s third-largest city and main port, which is increasingly at risk of coming under siege.
The city of Mariupol, on the other side of the Crimean peninsula, also continues under heavy bombardment as Moscow’s men try to bomb it into submission – with the aim seeming to be cutting off Ukrainian access to the Black Sea to deny the government access to lucrative trading routes.
Fighting is also continuing across the north and east, with Ukrainian special forces ambushing and destroying Russian tanks and armoured vehicles at Hostomel – to the west of the city – and Brovary – to the east – late yesterday and this morning.
Ukraine also claimed its jets have targeted part of a 40-mile convoy currently stalled outside the city, amid fears it would encircle the capital and bombard it.
Meanwhile Chernihiv, to the north east of Kyiv, and Kharkiv, in Ukraine’s east, were braced for more heavy shelling today after days of increasingly indiscriminate attacks including with banned cluster munitions have left dozens of civilians dead. Officials in Chernihiv said this morning that 47 people died in attacks yesterday.
President Putin is also stepping up actions on the home front, intended to head off internal dissent about the war as combat proves fiercer and harder than his generals anticipated, and western sanctions destroy large chunks of the economy.
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