How Ukrainian refugees found a second home in the UK - but still dream of the day they go back

Separated from their families, friends and the life they once enjoyed, they are refugees not knowing when, or even if, they will return home.

“I can speak English and have found work here, but there is a new culture, the stress after the explosions and the news from Ukraine. It is such a great mix for my mental health.After settling Viktoriia and Dmytro into the small village of Stebbing, Mariia returned to support her husband back in Lviv.

“Fortunately, sometimes he is available, which is great”, she says, adding that her biggest concern is that her father may have to go and fight. Inesa Semianiv feels she’s one of the luckier Ukrainian refugees because she has her family around her in London. Since the war Inesa, who works at the Royal Opera House in London, “everything changed” after the war.

“My husband and my whole family are now in Kyiv. Words cannot express my constant anxiety for relatives and friends.Tetyana, 46, is learning English but not as quickly as her daughter “who is almost fluent after attending school in England”, and they are in touch with Maria’s father as often as possible.

It’s been a “painful, strange and hopeless” year for Anna, and the people she has left behind hurts most. “To be honest, I’ve got a really nice experience too. I’ve been working at one of the colleges of the University of Oxford as a communications officer for seven months. “Even on the morning of the 24th, when I was informed that the war had begun, I did not believe it straight away.”

“The war radically changed my life,” she says. “A person who at least once in a lifetime saw explosions with her own eyes, heard the shrill terrible sound of sirens, hid in the basement and saw destroyed houses, broken human destinies, will never be the same as before.

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