Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
I’m so scared..
Mum’s agonising wait for news as
AS the shells rain down on Ukraine, all that most of the tens of millions of terrified people trapped there can do for now is wait and hope for the best.
Ukrainians here are anxiously waiting too – for news of relatives forced to decide whether to flee or take up arms after President Volodymyr Zelensky urged them to fight.
Some, including Nottingham-based Olena Berezhnyi, who has been trying to contact her two sons in Kharkiv without success, do not even know if their loved ones survived the start of Putin’s onslaught.
The 56-year-old cleaner now feels “nothing but despair” after air strikes battered the region some 12 miles from the Russian border.
“I do not know if they are still alive – I do not know what happened to them”, she says.
“I am just hoping they managed to escape. I am just scared and I can barely keep calm.
“But now my family, my hometown, my country and everything I knew is gone.” Among her estimated 70,000 fellow Ukrainians living in the UK is teacher Lidiia Nicholls, who fears for mum Nataliya, 59.
Lidiia is currently helping her bid to leave the city of Ternopil and head for the UK.
“My mum has heart problems, so I am very concerned about her if she stays in Ukraine,” said the 36-year-old who has lived with her young family in Holmfirth, near Huddersfield, West Yorks, since 2017.
“Because flights are cancelled and there’s been bombs at Ukrainian airports, she is trying to fly from Poland.
“Ternopil is around 140 miles from the Polish border, but the earliest I could get her a train
My family, my town, my country ...all I knew is gone OLENA BEREZHNYI ON FEARS FOR HER SONS