A Ukrainian woman and her mum have been waiting months to come to the UK after fleeing Vladimir Putin's invasion.
Veronica Chernyak fled Kyiv with her elderly mum Valentina, who has difficulty walking and uses two walking sticks, eight days after the start of the war.
They travelled to Poland by train and foot, and have moved three times within the eastern European country while they wait for their visa to come to the UK.
Veronica has received her visa, but her mum has yet to receive hers, and confusingly she received an email from the Home Office confirming on June 27 that it was ready.
It is a three-and-a-half-hour journey each way to the Visa Application Centre (VAC) in Warsaw and Veronica has made the trip three times only to be told it's not there.
She travelled there on July 1, July 4 and most recently on July 11 and is now desperate for answers.
The graphic designer told the Mirror: "I don't know what to do next. I tried to get an appointment and I don't have any feedback from them.
"There is also no helpline to call the VAC in Warsaw and right now we are stuck here.
"We want to go to the UK and I am planning on getting a job there. I don't know what to do next, but I think it's the same for all Ukrainians running from the war.
"I still hope that we will get my mum's visa."
She says her mum's passport isn't a biometric one and they had to make the trip to Warsaw to the VAC to have her passport verified and get her fingerprints done.
Veronica says they both had their first visa approved after arriving in Poland, but their first sponsor had to pull out after falling ill.
The mum and daughter then found a second sponsor and started the bureaucratic process again from scratch.
Veronica's visa was quickly approved, but she is still waiting for her mum's one to arrive.
It later transpired that because Valentina doesn't have a biometric passport her data needed to be resubmitted.
To make matters more confusing, Veronica later received an email from the Home Office saying her mum's visa was ready to pick up in Warsaw on June 27 - and logically assumed this was in regards to the second visa application.
When she got there on July 1, Veronica says they didn't have the visa and advised her to return on July 4 - making another seven-hour round trip.
When she arrived on July 4, they still didn't have it and ended up staying in Warsaw for a week hoping to pick it up, and leaving her mum back at their flat.
Veronica says she's at her wit's end after going another time on July 11 to find out it still isn't ready, despite receiving a confirmation email from June.
She said: "I wasn't so lucky on the 1st of July, they couldn't help me they couldn't find her visa they just suggested to come back Monday.
"I stayed from Warsaw more than one working week and when I came back again to Warsaw and nothing.
"They cannot explain why I received this final letter. They just took my telephone number and said they would call."
On July 18, she received an email from the UK Decision Making Centre of the Foreign Office saying she needed to re-scan the documentation for her mother's passport.
Veronica has described her situation of waiting for her mum's visa as the "second circle of hell" after fleeing her country and fears she will have to go to Ukraine.
She said: "If we will not get it this time we will be thinking to come back to Ukraine to get a biometric passport for her, but it is quite difficult to travel back."
Talking about her decision to leave Ukraine, Veronica said: "We spent the first eight days of the war in Kyiv before leaving.
"We were witnessing and heard all the bombing and the shelling, not as bad as in Bucha, but we decided to leave.
"My car was parked on a different side of a bank in Kyiv and because all the bridges were closed I couldn't get to my car so we had to evacuate by train.
"The railway station was chaotic and it was really packed. We didn't know where we were going and were like fishes in tins. There were young people, old people, animals and everyone was trying to get a train.
"The people working on the train didn't know where we were going and we were eventually told we were going to the Romanian border.
"We ended up in Lviv and that is when I started to communicate with friends who are abroad to see if they could help us once we get out of Ukraine.
"A volunteer took us to the Polish border by car and we crossed over on foot."
Veronica says she and her mother first lived in a friend's house two-bedroom house that was overcrowded with 13 people plus a dog and a cat.
They ended up finding another place to stay with the help of friends before moving a third time.
Veronica hopes to get to the UK soon so she can start a new life while things remain uncertain back home.
She said: "We are very appreciative to the UK government, you guys are helping us and I do understand there is no perfect system in any government especially when you've just opened your arms for us.
"We know it's not perfect and we aren't giving up."
A Government spokesperson told the Mirror: “Nearly 100,000 Ukrainians have arrived in the UK under our schemes.
“We have a dedicated helpline to help applicants and have increased staffing so we can help as many people as possible.”
