61 By Jo Griffin
From Kyiv to Kingswear - and the long road home
“I LOVE UKRAINE AND WE LONG TO LIVE AT HOME AGAIN BUT WE ARE SO GRATEFUL TO BRITAIN,” SAYS SVETLANA, 42, FROM KYIV. SHE AND HER 11-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER EVELINA FLED KYIV WHEN WAR BROKE OUT IN THE SPRING.
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urrently staying in Kingswear, thanks to a resident called Suzy who has kindly opened her home to them, Svetlana had travelled
with her daughter, crossing the border into Poland after a gruelling journey. Svetlana said: “I’d like to start my story by saying
that I’m grateful to all the people who helped us get to safety. “Waking up on February 24th at 4am to the horror of
exploding bombs. The war had begun. After living for a week under the siren and bombings, we decided we needed to save our daughter. “Kyiv was almost surrounded, and
it was only possible to get anywhere by rail. Our friends took us to the train station. There were a thousand scared people, a thousand little kids, and there was only one train. We were lucky to be standing close to each other on the train. It was only on the train that we found out that we were going from Kyiv to Lviv. “The journey was 10 hours on the way and again at
“Evelina was very brave and I saw that she was very “ After living
for a week under the siren and bombings, we decided we needed to save our daughter.”
resilient. The only thing that showed was that she couldn’t eat for the first two days,” said her mother, who is a hairdresser. “At the border there were such long queues but people in Poland were very kind and helped a lot. We stayed with a friend of mine and after a week the British programme for Ukrainians was launched and I found out we could go to England. My cousin had been living in Dartmouth for years. She filled in the paperwork for our visa applications. We had to wait three weeks. It was not easy. We met a Polish lady who could speak English who helped us a lot. Every day she telephoned England and kept being told: ‘Please wait, please wait.’ “Eventually, we both received visas and we flew from Poland to Bristol where my cousin met us. We stayed in her flat with her 10-year-
the train station, 1,000 frightened people and children. After spending the night in Lviv, the train is again full for 15 hours. “When we arrived in Poland, the Poles welcomed us
like relatives. We were safe now,” remembers Svetlana, who’d had to leave her husband to get their daughter to safety.
He is not allowed to leave Ukraine but still runs his business from their apartment. They were used to cosmopolitan city life and often enjoyed trips to other European cities. Now Svetlana and Evelina are getting used to village life in the Devon countryside.
old son. It is a very small flat for all four of us, we had to share beds but Evelina was enrolled into school at Dartmouth Academy straight away,” said Svetlana who was very relieved that her daughter could have a place in a school. There are now several Ukrainian children studying there. “We had so much help from a lady called Dawn who
was the first person who made us feel safe here. So many people have helped us in lots of ways.” Svetlana and Evelina needed to find somewhere
else to stay and in April they saw on Facebook that someone in Kingswear was ready to share their home. They met Suzy and were able to stay with her. The church in the village gave them a welcome box with gifts in when they arrived, and a small group of people
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