FORMER York postman John Darvill and his Ukrainian family, who are believed to be in a refugee convoy fleeing the country, says it ‘may take a day or two more’ before they can reach safety.

John and his family - Ukrainian wife Yuliia and mother-in-law Olga – fled the tiny village near the besieged eastern city of Kharkiv where they had been staying since the Russian invasion began yesterday morning.

They had been running out of food, and there had been shooting in nearby fields and an explosion which blew up a nearby railway bridge.

John posted a message on Facebook yesterday morning to say they were making a break for it, and hoped to join a convoy.

Yesterday afternoon John’s friend Daniel Collinson, who himself escaped from Ukraine with his Ukrainian wife Yana by train earlier this week and has now returned to York, confirmed that John and his family were travelling westwards through Ukraine and ‘making good progress’.

Today, in an update on Facebook, John posted: “We are trying our hardest to get to the border.

“It may take a day or two more but all OK at the moment.

“Things are moving fast and our window of opportunity gets smaller. Trying to keep positive.”

The BBC has reported that Russia and Ukraine have agreed in principle on the need to set up safe ‘humanitarian corridors’ for refugees and humanitarian aid.

John’s wife Yuliia has relatives in Poland, and John himself has two daughters, Rosanna and Ruby, and a granddaughter, Poppy, here in York.