As merciless Russian troops invaded the country, one terrified British woman has told how she was forced to leave her partner behind in war-torn Ukraine.
Rebecca Jackson made the gruelling 1,000-mile dash back to the UK from Ukraine with her rescue dog Lucas while girlfriend Yulia stayed behind.
She only had £6 to her name on her desperate journey out of Ukraine - but the pair have successfully made it back to her parents’ home in Kent from the city of Lviv, the historic capital of western Ukraine.
The 28-year-old, who has been working in the war-torn country as a teacher since last year, only shipped her German shorthaired pointer cross out to be with her in January.
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Yulia did not wish to leave the country so Rebecca made the gruelling trip home across land and sea with just one other colleague and their pets for company.
Without the responsibility of Lucas, Rebecca says she would not have left Kyiv at all.
But she realised she had no choice as it was impossible to carry the 30kg dog to the bomb shelter in 10 minutes – the warning time they would usually have before Russian explosives rained down.
Rebecca said: “He's a rescue dog and he just couldn't cope with it.
“Already with the air raid sirens, it was just horrendous. He was in pieces.”
But Rebecca was forced to wait before she could escape to the UK as there was a delay in officials providing her with a waiver.
If you come into Britain your pet usually has to go through an expensive four-month quarantine or it is put down.
She was given the choice to stay or leave Lucas behind.
Rebecca said: “It's just like ‘Do I leave my dog or not?’ So I of course did not.
“The whole time driving back I was just thinking “Please God, let us get the dogs in.”
“My dog is very ill now. I think it's the stress.”
One of the last teachers to leave Kyiv, by then only a quarter of the children she had been teaching remained.
She banded together with other Brits who had pets and were in the same situation.
Rebecca initially travelled to Lviv, in the west of Ukraine, where she tried to get through the border to Romania.
But huge crowds meant that after 11 hours, she and Lucas were still stuck.
She said: “I couldn’t get my dog through the crowd of men who were becoming extremely aggressive.
“There was fighting, there was shouting, there was pushing - they were pushing children.
“They were putting babies over the fence to try and get them to safety so they weren't being crushed.”
After Rebecca’s Ukrainian credit cards were cancelled, she only had 250 hryvnia, or £6.30, to her name.
Kind local families came to her aid and took her in for the night before she went back to try again the next day.
This time she was helped by a 12-year-old boy, who she befriended by teaching him maths.
In four more hours, he had helped Rebecca get across the border by translating for her.
From Romania, she, her colleague Gavin, Lucas and Gavin’s dog Eli travelled to Budapest and then Vienna.
In Austria, they were rescued by a friend who had driven 18 hours from Essex to take them home.
She got back to her parents’ house in Sandwich, Kent, with Lucas on Thursday after Brit border officials waived the dog through.
Teacher Rebecca said: “The dog saved my life as he made my decision to flee easier and I may have stayed on but fo
“That would have been very, very dangerous.”
Rebecca had been living in Kent and travelled to Ukraine last year to work as a teacher at an English speaking school in Kyiv.
Days later she met girlfriend Yulia, 24, who had lived in Kyiv for seven years after fleeing Donetsk during the 2014 war.
Rebecca said: “Yulia is bloody strong. She’s constantly at work at the moment trying to help everybody she can.
"She chose to leave Kyiv, so she's in some village in the west, but she's not leaving.
“I just wish she'd come.
“And she knows that she has to get out if there will be a fear for life..”
Even after the horrific journey, Rebecca has already signed up to return as a Red Cross volunteer now Lucas is safe.
She said: “Ukraine is just the most amazing place I've ever been. The people are just incredible and such fighters.
“I have no intentions of not going back.
“I just worry that, well, that I won't have anything to go back to.”
Rebecca’s girlfriend Yulia speaks five languages and worked as a communications manager in a think tank in Kyiv before Putin attacked.
Rebecca was heartbroken to leave her behind but Yulia refused to give up on her home country.
She is now using her skills to feed stories out of Ukraine - writing news, spreading initiatives, interviewing victims and translating stories.
She said: “I'm really proud to be Ukrainian and I'm proud of our people. I think that now we will be superheroes for the world.
“But it's terrible at what cost this is happening.
“I am very angry that the world can accept these things - that NATO is saying we won't help you. You just can continue to die.
“We have a joke that very soon that there will be no houses in Europe which will not have blue and yellow lighting, and they will have to do something else.”
But as she works from inside Ukraine, she is glad that her girlfriend is so willing to help her homeland by signing up to be a volunteer for the Red Cross at the border.
Yulia said: “I am really grateful and proud that she’s doing it and she wants to do it.
“I am proud of her and if she decides to come to Ukraine because there is this option and she wants to I will be worried of course but I won’t stop her.”
She added: “It feels like a kind of a betrayal if I would just leave and go live a normal life somewhere when many people still stay here. It just doesn't feel right.”
Peta had previously called for the UK government to abandon strict immigration rules about people not being allowed to cross with pets.
Currently, all animals entering the UK must be vaccinated, microchipped and test negative for rabies - but PETA say this is impossible to do as Ukrainians flee invading Russian forces.
