Fiona4Ukraine

On Thursday morning an exhausted young mother and child landed at Manchester Airport in Northern England, having made the long journey from Chernihiv, Northern Ukraine. They are guests of wonderful sponsors (under the UK's Homes For Ukraine scheme)  in Trawden , the village where I lived before moving to Ukraine. Chernihiv, like Kharkiv, is close to the Russian border and experiences frequent bombings. As well, its inhabitants have the collective traumatic memory of surviving Russian occupation at the beginning of the full invasion, in 2022. Myroslava ( Myro for short) was born during this terrifying period, in a basement. Her mother has made the difficult decision to leave home and family behind so that Myro can have a life of peace, stability and relative normality, until there is peace in Ukraine. Мир ( Myr ) means peace in Ukrainian. I try to imagine how strange and different it will feel to experience, not only the peace and quiet, but a tiny village with steep, narrow r...

  In writing to us about the Hell's Kitchen Halloween party last Friday, Liuda gave us a little history. In 2022 (the first year of Russia's full invasion), the Hell's Kitchen Team didn't celebrate any holidays until the fall (autumn) because they simply didn't feel like it. Then, unexpectedly, volunteers got together for Halloween and had such a fantastic time that, in the years that followed, people started asking, in advance, " A re we celebrating Halloween this year?" So , for "Hell's Kitchen, Halloween became a symbolic event, as well as an opportunity to take a few hours off from everyday problems and have fun. The time, attention and care that went into the decorations and themed food were incredible. The party lived up to my expectations, having attended last year's, and my costume (much the same as last year) showed that witches don't age! Recently, my volunteer friend, Jos, and I had the privilege and fun of being members of a j...

  This blog was going to be entitled, Autumn in Kharkiv, but today's events make that title inadequate. Mid-morning, Kharkiv came under a drone attack; three hit a private kindergarten not far from the city centre and set it on fire. Fortunately, teachers managed to get children to safety and all 48 children were evacuated. But a utility worker, who was cleaning the street, was killed. Ten were injured, including a five-year-old girl.  The last few weeks have felt like a relatively quiet period in Kharkiv, whilst attacks have centred on Kyiv and elsewhere, frequently targeting energy infrastructure; e.g. the whole of the left bank in Kyiv was without electricity after a Russian attack on the night of 9 - 10 October. It's colder than usual this year, already close to freezing at night, a harbinger of what could be a difficult winter. There have been attacks here, too, including on our power supplies, leading to these trams in Saltivka district being at a standstill... But the m...

1 October is a public holiday in Ukraine, in honour of veterans and fallen members of the Ukrainian armed forces. Around 2,000 foreign combatants have been killed fighting for Ukraine (confirmed open ‑ data sources) and on Saturday I will be going to Kyiv for the memorial service of one of those brave people, who died fighting in the International Legion, aged 22. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/01/people-think-they-know-what-war-is-heres-what-i-learned-in-seven-years-on-ukraines-frontline   This in-depth Guardian article is worth a read. It chronicles the lives of ordinary people, living close to the shifting frontline since 2014, describing both the horrors and the mundanity of life. It includes a short documentary. One paragraph particularly struck me: "Most people think they know what war is. We’ve seen it thousands of times in movies and news coverage: tanks, soldiers, explosions, crying women, pitiable refugees. These images are so familiar they’ve become trite. B...