YORK man Daniel Collinson and his Ukrainian wife Yana, who fled the besieged Ukrainian city of Kharkiv by train, are expected to fly back to the UK tonight.

Daniel's relieved mum Sue, of Acomb, said the couple managed to cross the border from Ukraine into Poland last night.

“The people in Poland have put them up – they’ve been amazing,” she said.

“He will be flying back tonight! He should be back in York by about 10.30pm.”

Sue, her husband Chris and Daniel’s brother and sister, Jack and Megan, faced a nerve-shredding wait on Tuesday as they waited to hear whether Daniel, 27, and 23-year-old Yana had been able to make it out of Ukraine.

The couple had fled the eastern city of Kharkiv after spending five days with other locals sheltering in the underground while Russian bombs pounded the city.

At 8.30 on Tuesday morning, Daniel messaged his mum to say they were on a train heading westwards trhough Ukraine.

“We’ve got no charge, and my phone might die. But assume we’re safe!” Daniel texted.

Sue and her family then had to wait for several hours before she got a phone call from Daniel yesterday evening to say they had managed to cross the border into Poland.

They spoke again earlier today.

“They will be heading off to the airport soon,” Sue said.

English teacher Daniel and Yana, who works in IT, had spent five days living in the Metro in Kharkiv, the eastern Ukrainian city that has been under intense attack by Putin’s Russian army.

Sue spoke to the pair by phone on Saturday.

“They could see all the shelling around them,” Sue said. “Yana was upset and crying. She was saying ‘nobody knows what’s happening here’. I said ‘No, Yana, we will get you out.”

The bock of flats where the pair lived was blown up on Monday night by a cluster bomb. “If they’d still been there, they would have been killed,” Sue said.

Daniel, a former York High pupil who studied Sports Coaching & Development at York St John University before working as a fitness instructor and lifeguard at GLL, has lived in Ukraine for several years. He speaks fluent Russian.

Sue and her husband Chris last saw him 17 months ago, when they went out to Ukraine to visit Daniel and Yana.

They have not been able to see each-other since nevause of Covid. “It’s 17 months suince I last hugged him,” Sue said.

“If I had known then that it would be so long, I wouldn’t have left!”

Now that she knows Daniel is safe, Sue says her thoughts have turned to his friend John Darvill, another York man who is still trapped in Ukraine with his Ukrainian family.

She has been in touch with John by Messenger.

“I said we were all thinking of him,” she said. “I said ‘we will get you out, John!'”