A Ukrainian family has been forced to flee to the UK for the second time after fighting in their city, Kharkiv. intensified.
Yulia Brazhnyk and her children, Maks, 13, and Serhii, 9, originally came to Ramsbury, Wiltshire, in 2022 and stayed with local resident Sarah Kinch.
They travelled back to Ukraine in December 2022 to find Ms Brazhnyk’s sister and be reunited with the children’s father. But as the bombings intensified this year, Ms Brazhnyk made the difficult decision to return to the UK to keep her sons safe.
Maks said their last six months in Ukraine had been “very difficult”, with “a lot of bombing”. He added: “It was quite noisy, sometimes we couldn’t sleep – sometimes there was no hot water or light.”
Around 195,000 Ukrainians came to the UK, under visa schemes introduced after the Russian invasion in February 2022.
“They are basically our Ukrainian family. We can’t leave them in dangerous situations,” said their previous hostess, Mrs Kinch, who helped them find a new home in Wiltshire.
As the fighting in Kharkov intensified, Ms Brazhnyk kept in touch with Ms Kinch via WhatsApp.
“It got to the point where I said to her, ‘Do you have to go back?’
“Last time they had a special status, but this time it has gone,” Ms Kinch added.
Serhii quickly found a place at a local primary school, but there were waiting lists for Maks at the two nearest secondary schools.
Luckily, a spot became available, so he went back to school this week.
To find a home, Ms. Kinch said, her family had to “stand as a guarantor so the landlord would rent it to them.”
Ms Kinch believes that people are not as aware of the war in Ukraine as they used to be.
Figures show approximately 180,000 Ukrainian refugees now in UK under the Homes for Ukraine program, which was launched when Russian troops invaded their homeland in February 2022.
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