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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Tess Reidy

‘This was their home too’: Frankie Mills’s intimate portraits of Ukrainian refugees in the UK

5 recent arrivals from Ukraine photographed on Dartmoor
‘Like a small, new and happy life​’: Olena Bilokrenytska, Paulina Zherdieva, Valentyna Romanchuk, Tania Drobot (kneeling, taking selfie) and Valeriia Viunskovska on Dartmoor. All photographs by Frankie Mills Photograph: Frankie Mills

The remote village of Moorhaven, 15 miles east of Plymouth, is a place far removed from war. With open, barren moorland on one side and rolling countryside on the other, the surrounding landscape is scattered with wandering sheep and horses. So when a dozen Ukrainian refugees arrived there two years ago, Frankie Mills, a photojournalist at the local paper, found it hard not to pay attention. “It’s a small, tight-knit British community. The people that came were very visible.”

When Mills posted on a village Facebook forum asking to photograph some of the refugees, there was some resistance. “People thought it was really insensitive. They were very wary and sponsors saw it as their responsibility to protect their guests.”

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