A couple who fled from their home in Ukraine have said they feel “helpless” as their two young children are still trapped in a region that has fallen to Russian forces.
McDonald Majawala, 29, and Olya Majawala, 31, were at their home in Kyiv when the invasion started – but their children, Emily and Ethan, aged two and three, were more than 340 miles away staying with their grandparents in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson.
The couple fled from Kyiv in early March and planned to meet their children and grandparents – Olya’s parents – on the Polish border as they had planned to make the journey to the border too.
But Kherson train station and airport were taken by Moscow’s forces on 2 March, and fuel was near impossible to find, leaving the grandparents and youngsters unable to leave the city.
When they found out, the couple struggled to continue their journey. “I didn’t want to leave Kyiv,” says Olya, whose parents and extended relatives are also in Kherson. “Leaving Kyiv felt like I was leaving my children, like we went somewhere far away and just left them there.”
With Kyiv also under siege and no way to get into Kherson, the couple had no choice. They crossed to Poland and in the hope that their family would soon be able to get out of Kherson through a humanitarian corridor.
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The pair applied under the UK’s Ukraine family visa scheme to join McDonald’s father, who is settled in Britain – but by the time the visas were granted their children were still trapped.
They travelled to Britain on Tuesday, and are currently living in temporary accommodation in Deptford, close to McDonald’s father’s home.
With Russia claiming that its troops were now fully controlling the entire region of Kherson, they are beset with worry.
“We feel helpless,” says McDonald, a Zimbabwean national who ran a small business with his wife in Kyiv. “It’s very difficult just to sit and wait. Our biggest fears are what is going to happen if the Russian invasion continues and how long do we have to wait to get to our kids?
“We are praying for a green corridor so the people can evacuate the city safely – as soon as that happens we will go to the closest border and take them from the hell.”
When the war started on 24 February, Olya’s parents wanted to travel with Ethan and Emily out of the city and to the border, but there was traffic “everywhere” and they struggled to find fuel.
On 25 February, their grandfather managed to get 20 litres of petrol, but they knew it would not be enough to get them very far and decided to drive instead to Olya’s grandmother’s cottage, in a village on the outskirts of the region, until they could find more fuel.
But the day never came, as Russian forces started to take control of the region, setting up check points around it, preventing anyone from leaving. They remain in the cottage, along with other extended family members, not knowing when they will be able to get out of Ukraine.
“My mother-in-law said last night was very difficult because the bombardment was so close and they could hear it,” said McDonald from Deptford on Wednesday. “The kids woke up and asked what was going on.
“I feel lost. We’ve come here to try to set up a home and a future for when our kids can join us, but there’s no settling in here because I’m just thinking I need to get out of this place and get them.”
It is now more than three weeks since they last saw their children, and with the absence of humanitarian corridors out of the region continuing, the couple is struggling to cope with the situation.
“Our daughter is two, she doesn’t understand a lot. But my son is constantly asking where we are, when are we going to come to get him from here,” says Olya. “He wants to be with us. He’s like ‘why did you go without me’ – how do you explain this to a three-year-old?
“I miss them. Sometimes I open my phone and I look at photos of them and I cry. I feel terrible. It’s a very difficult situation when you can’t help your family.
“We had a good life in Kyiv. No one imagines that this could happen. It’s unbelievable. It’s the 21st century – it should be solved in a diplomatic way, not with guns and bombs targeting little kids.”
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