As the shells rain down thousands of miles away in Ukraine, all that the people trapped there can do is wait and hope.
Hope that the world can stop Vladimir Putin, hope that peace comes quickly and most of all hope that the people they love find safety.
For Ukrainians in Britain the waiting is torture as relatives back home try to flee perilous cities, stock up on food and fuel or contemplate the reality of taking up arms after President Volodymyr Zelensky urged his citizens to fight.
Nottingham-based Olena Berezhnyi has been trying to contact her two sons who live in the Kharkiv region around 20km from the Russian border, without success.
The 56-year-old cleaner how fears the worst after airstrikes battered the area.
“I do not know if they are still alive – I do not know what happened to them”, she says.
“I am just hoping that they managed to escape. I am just scared and I can barely keep calm. But now my family, my hometown, my country and everything I knew is gone.”
She is just one of the estimated 70,000 Ukrainians living in the UK, along with teacher Lidiia Nicholls, whose biggest concern at the moment is her mum Nataliya, 59.
Lidiia is currently helping her with leave her home city of Ternopil for the UK.
“My mum has heart problems, so I am very concerned about her if she stays in Ukraine,” says the 36-year-old who has lived in Holmfirth, near Huddersfield, West Yorks, since November 2017 with her young family.
“Because flights are cancelled and there’s been bombs at Ukrainian airports, she is trying to fly from Poland. Ternopil is around 140 miles from the Polish border, but the earliest I could get her a train ticket for is this Saturday as they are all fully-booked. I’m hoping she will be with me in the next few days, but I am very worried.”
Meanwhile, retired IT worker Paul Iwanyckyj says his relatives who live in the western city of Lviv have been getting documentation together should they need to flee their homes.
“In our group chat, the main messages to each other have been to be calm and resolute, but also practical,” says Paul, who is 65 and lives in Doncaster. “They have been talking about the need to have all their important documentations and paperwork in order in case they need to move elsewhere in the country. A lot of my relatives have young families they will want to keep safe and their decisions will be based around that.
“The thing is, it’s difficult. People don’t want to leave their homes because it’s where their roots are. I have a big family and they all live in a two-hour radius from each other.”
Another one of Paul’s concerns is that younger members could take up arms.
“I spoke to my cousin in Lviv a couple of days ago (Wednesday) and there was still an air of hope at that time that Putin may not actually invade. However, it’s clear now that was his plan all along, and now Zelenskyy has asked for volunteers to join the Ukrainian army, which potentially will put a lot of my young family members in the firing line at some point.
“A lot of them have already done national service, so they aren’t totally new to being armed. Whether they fight or not is a decision they will take themselves in their own time, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they will as they are very patriotic.”
Yaroslaw Tymchyshyn says he has a relative willing to fight. “I managed to speak to a family member on Sunday, who told me, ‘don’t worry, the machine gun is on the wall ready’,” says Yaroslaw, 68, who lives in Bolton.
“I’ve not heard from one of my cousins for a while and I was also wondering if it’s because some of their family may be in the army and they didn’t want me to worry. Ukrainians are willing to get up and fight. They’re very proud of their country.”
As well as preparing documentation - and potentially to fight - there have been videos shared on social media of long queues for essentials such as food and medicine.
Lidiia’s sister-in-law told her a lot of people in their local area are stocking up. “She told me it’s very busy, with crowds everywhere,” she says.
“People are buying a lot of food and medicines so they can have everything they need just in case - my sister-in-law has been doing this too, buying a lot for her freezer.
“A lot of people have come into the city from neighbouring villages to go to the market as well to stock up.”
That is echoed elsewhere too.
“There’s a lot of stockpiling going on,” says Yaroslaw. “People know what could be coming round the corner. I’ve seen a lot of videos and photos of large queues.”
As chair of the Bolton branch of the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain (AUGB), Yaroslaw has been working with the organisation to help raise £50,000 to buy essential items for families in Ukraine.
The appeal has now gone over its target, but Yaroslaw says the AUGB are planning further fundraising after the situation has escalated.
“It’s more important than ever that we raise money for essential items for Ukrainians,” says Yaroslaw, who will be spending Saturday on the steps of Bolton Town Hall with donation buckets to raise funds alongside his colleagues.
“Myself and my colleagues at AUGB are so worried,” adds Yaroslaw, whose late father Nychajlo moved to the UK from Ukraine as a displaced person following World War Two.
“We think there could be an ethnic genocide in Ukraine, as Putin wants to wipe the country off the face of the Earth. He will go to any lengths to get what he wants.”
Olena says she is left feeling “nothing but despair” after the Russian invasion.
She adds: “Putin does not believe Ukraine exists - he does not care about us, who are grieving abroad or the ones stuck there.”
