Tower and Town, March 2026 (view the full edition)Kateryna's StgoryWhen the invasion started my father was taken to the front line straight away. For nine days my mum and I, along with our neighbours and friends, helped people evacuated to our city of Dnipro. We were collecting essential items and medicines for hospitals and schools, as they were overwhelmed with wounded people, and cooking meals for the local territorial defence forces. Helping other people helped us to be strong and resilient. On the morning of March 4th, my father phoned us and asked us to leave Ukraine. The front line was moving fast towards Dnipro, and Russians were prioritising capturing Ukrainian military family members, putting them in filtration camps where they were tortured, raped, and interrogated to their death. We had five minutes to say goodbye to him for the very last time. [Katerina and her mum and their two dogs travelled by car to Lviv hoping to get to Poland where they were promised shelter by a friend of a friend of a neighbour] Arriving in Lviv, standing in a random small street, trying to find somewhere to stay with two dogs if only for one night to be able to rest - that was when I fully realised the loss of our home and family. I let myself burst into tears for the first time since the 24th of February - it was just impossible to stay calm and resilient anymore. When the UK launched its 'Homes for Ukraine' program in the middle of March 2022, we decided to go, mainly because of my fluent English. We had to stay in Poland for the next 4 months, preparing documents for the dogs to comply with the rules. Finally we succeeded and were granted the UK entry for our two old ladies. Our journey from the eastern part of Poland took us 5 days by car. We crossed into the UK on July 14th 2022, and our acquaintance with British politeness and friendliness began right at customs, and the same day we finally arrived in Marlborough. The most outstanding experience was to meet kind, friendly and smiling people! It felt like they knew us all our lives already. Unfortunately, we don't smile in Ukraine as much, so it took us a couple of days to get used to smile back, and months of muscular pain in our not-trained-to-smile cheeks. I can't count the number of supportive hugs we received when locals found out that we are from Ukraine. I am really grateful and want to thank Marlborough residents and the whole UK for keeping being supportive from day one and helping all this time. Seeing Ukrainian flags all over the whole kingdom means a lot to us as Ukrainians, and warms our hearts. |