A British dad has vowed not to be "kicked out" of his Kyiv home after the Russian invasion left him sheltering with his young family in the basement.
Dan Baker told how despite the sounds of explosions coming from outside he and his family were watching Netflix to try and keep some normality.
And he even said he felt "lucky" as their home still had food, water, electricity, and WiFi, adding that many people sleeping in metro stations are finding things much tougher, reports Sussex Live..
The 41-year-old teacher, who was born and raised in Brighton, said: “This is my home and I'm not going to be kicked out of my home.
“To be honest, I’m devastated.”
Dan has spent the last five years living in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and now finds himself on the edge of a warzone.
Along with his Ukrainian wife, Victoria, 34 and 12-year-old stepdaughter Veronica, Dan said his family has holed up in a basement to shelter from the Russian invasion which began on Thursday, March 24.
“It’s kind of overwhelmed me a little bit, but as it stands, we’re here," he said.
Attacks on Kyiv and numerous other Ukrainian cities have come after Russian troops had been building up on the country's border in recent weeks.
In the early hours of Thursday morning, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his attack and his forces have since moved swiftly through eastern parts of the country.
Reports now suggest troops are closing in on Kyiv..
Dan said: “I shouldn’t be scared to live in my home and that’s how we feel, we’re very determined to stay here and see it through.
“But no matter how many times you hear those explosions, you’ll never get used to them.
“When it first started yesterday there was some destruction maybe 10 miles from our flat.
“For now it seems as though it has eased off a bit, though there are faint rumblings you can hear all of the time.”
Dan continued: “I honestly don’t know. We are just keeping ourselves safe and trying to be happy and trying to get on with life.
“Of course, if something really goes wrong I’ve got the car ready outside and I’ve got a bit of fuel to get out the city until we find more, or we can try to find a flight.”
As news broke of the Russian invasion, miles of traffic was reported fleeing Kyiv and other major cities as people headed to the relative safety outside of the city and towards the border.
Dan went on to describe his current life in a country under martial law and said that after being woken up at 4am by missile explosions he didn’t feel safe in his 26th floor flat so made the move underground.
“Not to sound dramatic, but we are in the middle of a war and that’s something that’s hard to process,” he continued.
“I think I feel like there’s a lot of pressure on me to try to be strong for my family and it’s difficult, you know?
“But we’re keeping happy and we’re keeping strong.
“There’s nobody else here with us but we brought the cat along - we couldn’t leave her behind.”
He added: “We went out about two hours ago [to the supermarket] before the last siren and then we came back and it just felt like a normal day.
“People are getting on with things because they have to.”
He concluded: “Until we woke up yesterday morning there was no indication that anything was going to happen.
“Everything was great, everything was calm, and there was no tension in the air.”
Foreign Office advice is for British nationals to leave Ukraine if it is safe to do so.
For now, Dan and his family, who are Ukrainian, are remaining in Kyiv and are powerfully defiant in their defence of their home city.
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