My life was in Ukraine, but my daughters and I had to leave: their future is everything

Our sponsors in England could not have been kinder. But when the app on my phone buzzes, I know the Russians are attacking back home

My family and I didn’t expect to end up in the UK. We spent the first several months of the war in Ukraine in our home town of Boyarka, a small town near Kyiv. Many people we know left, but I’ve always lived in Ukraine – my whole life to that point had been there. Our two girls, Kseniia and Polina, are 12 and nine, and they’ve never known anywhere else either. My husband worked in IT before the war, and then he worked defending against Russian cyber-attacks and propaganda for the resistance. Life was in Ukraine, so we stayed.

It was the girls who convinced us to leave. October was particularly hard. Boyarka is on the way to Irpin and Bucha, cities everyone has now heard of. The missile attacks are one thing – they sound like high-flying planes – but the Iranian drones are much worse. They fly very low to the ground, you can see them pass overhead. In the autumn there were massive attacks on critical infrastructure, so many drones were flying by. People were killed and everything stopped working. Power went out, the internet, and the girls were rarely going to school. You would go out on the street in the evening and there were no lights in any windows – it was a terrible feeling.

I was scared – we would all cry together during the attacks – but it was especially no place for children. My eldest seemed as though she was concussed, even when things were calmer. My cousin had been in Tonbridge, in England, for some time already, and she said we had to join her. Our own timing was lucky as there were many sponsors then, nowadays I hear it is harder. Within a single day we found a sponsor; within a week, a visa. I couldn’t believe how fast the system could work. A bus to Krakow – which stalled for 15 hours at the border because the power was out after missile attacks – and a flight to Gatwick, and we were in England.

The thought I have most often is how fortunate we are. I know not every person is always good, but we have somehow met only kind people here. Our hosts gave us keys to their house when we arrived at the airport, and since then we have felt like part of the family. They helped us find schools, and the headteachers have been incredibly helpful. My youngest, especially, had very little English when we arrived, but the teachers and the other kids have been so supportive.

This is what I wanted most for the girls – a normal school day, study, play. I trained in psychology as an adult, and I volunteered to do counselling during the war. I saw that the effect on children was terrible. In Ukraine, children are anxious, in a stressed and depressive state, they act out because they don’t understand why they have to go through all this.

We have so many impressions of England now. My first training was in architecture, and when we went to London I couldn’t believe I was seeing the buildings I had studied in books, right in front of me. Wherever we are, we sit on the top deck of the bus; it’s so high up that you can see everything. The supermarkets were a big shock. There’s so much food, and it’s much much cheaper than we’re used to – especially vegetables. English food is alright so far, but it is very heavy. But that’s fine, we cook a lot at home.

We had a nice surprise at Christmas – we had arrived in December, and our hosts had a big tree and presents under it for the girls. People here do Christmas much bigger than at home. The kids couldn’t believe there were so many presents for them – they were shouting they were so happy. Polina is a Harry Potter fan, and she got a Lego Hedwig. When I think of how easily things went, from our visas to schools to my English lessons and support payments, sometimes I can’t believe it.

But, of course, life isn’t just easy. A missile sounds like an aeroplane, and so now aeroplanes sound like missiles. The girls are scared when they fly overhead. Myself, I keep an app on my phone that alerts me when the public warning alarms go off in Boyarka – out of habit. I will be in the shop and it will buzz, and I know the Russians are striking and people are taking shelter. People ask, “What’s that?” and I can’t easily explain it. My husband is still in Ukraine, too, and that’s hard. Overall, though, we are so grateful to be here. I don’t know how long it will be, but we will always appreciate and have a connection with England.

• Alina Andriiako is a Ukrainian architect and practical psychologist currently living in England. As told to Stephen Buranyi

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