Ukraine refugee Vita Prykhodko speaks ahead of invasion anniversary

The mother and daughter fled their home country a month after the Russian invasion on February 24 last year.

Since June, they have been staying with a host in Selby.

Orriana goes to Brayton Academy. Vita says their host - a young woman - is great, they get on well with their neighbours, and every Sunday they go to a church service at Selby Abbey.

"They are very welcoming, very friendly," said Vita, 41, a lawyer by profession. "Sometimes we go for a coffee together."

But nothing can stop Orriana's terrible homesickness.

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She misses her family - grandparents Varvara and Ivan, uncle Sergiy, and nephews Artur and Konstantyn.

And, while Orriana gets on well with her new classmates at school, there are no other Ukrainians in her class, Vita says. So she misses her friends back at home too.

Vita, second right and Orriana, centre, with Vita's brother Sergiy, sister-in-law Oksana and nephew Artur before the war (Image: Vita Prykhodko)

But every time Vita thinks it might be safe to return home, something else happens - missile strikes, or blackouts caused by damage to power stations. In a way, her life is on hold, she says. "I cannot make a decision whether to leave or to remain."

With the first anniversary of the Russian invasion fast approaching, it makes her anger all the more intense.

"I have grown up as a lawyer, as a person who trusted that such a horrible war in the 21st century was not possible," she said.

"I could not believe that war could have happened - that people would come to invade, and not only kill, but rape a lot of women and children, and terrorise people. I can never forgive or forget that."

Vita says as soon as the Russians invaded on February 24 last year, she and Orriana left their home in Kyiv and went to stay with her parents in the town of Zgurivka, near the capital city.

In happier times: Vita, centre, with parents Varvara and Ivan before the war (Image: Vita Prykhodko,)

But as the Russians advanced south, they soon found themselves almost surrounded, with Russian forces on two sides of the town. The road to Kyiv itself was soon blocked.

"It was frightening, it was dangerous," Vita said.

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Once, she was about to go for a walk in a local park - only to be called back by her parents. "They said that tanks were not far away."

On another occasion, Vita - whose husband died several years before the invasion - says she saw a missile go over the town.

But worst of all was the things her teenage daughter saw online. "She saw some horrible photos."

A man carrying flowers past metal anti-tank barriers in Maidan Square, Kyiv, this month (Image: AP/ Tony Hicks)

After a month, Vita and Orriana fled to Moldova - leaving her parents behind. The mother and daughter were driven to the border by a friend, then walked across into Moldova on foot. "We had only small backpacks," she said.

They stayed in a friend's home for two months. But then, with conflict also breaking out in the Moldovan breakaway state of Transnistria, they decided to seek refuge in the UK.

They flew to Poland, applied to the Homes for Ukraine scheme - and arrived in Selby at the end of June last year.

Vita is full of praise for the support the UK has shown to her home country. The UK, along with Poland, was the first country to stand up for Ukraine, she said.

But, with no sign of the war ending as the anniversary of the invasion approaches, she says every country must now stand against Russia.

It is a case of protecting international law and order, she says. Russia broke international law - and if it can do that by invading one country, she says, who might be next?

Orriana and Vita in Kyiv before the war (Image: Vita Prykhodko)