Ukraine: Lisa Krivoruchkina fled her home in Ukraine last year after the invasion

Lisa, 25, left Kyiv in May and was placed with a host in Portsmouth.

The 25-year-old was a PR and media specialist for the Presidential Party and decided to come to England when the war started - but had to leave her parents behind because her mum is an MP and her dad is under 60 meaning that he may be called up to fight on the front line.

She said: ‘I was waiting for a couple of weeks and it was the most horrifying experience of my life because I thought that no one would accept me here but then my host texted me and said she would be happy to have me here.’

She moved in with her host and her host’s four cats, where she is welcome to stay for as long as needed, and said that she now feels ‘safe’.

Lisa said: ‘I was really scared, that was my first emotion, and my basic emotion for the first couple of months. I couldn’t process that there are no air sirens any more no explosions and you are just living without it at all, and it is hard to talk about it right now because on my first week in Portsmouth there was terrible thunder and lightning and my first thought in the middle of the night was “where to hide”.’

The Portsmouth community has established a number of groups and classes that Ukrainian refugees can attend to help them integrate back into society, and Lisa has praised her case workers.

She said: ‘The process of settling in was more than I could have expected from people here because my case workers are amazing ladies.

‘I feel that everyone here is not only supporting me but Ukrainians in general, everyone knows what is going on. Everyone knows the cities in Ukraine.’

Portsmouth Helps Ukraine, which was set up by Viola Langley, is a community support group for refugees that have come to the city to escape the dangerous scenes at home.

The group has been letting people know where they can go to receive help with their English and they have also organised multiple events, as well as distributing donations to those in need.

Lisa said that the people in the city have been kind and welcoming and she has been overwhelmed by the support.

She has been staying in contact with her family daily, and she visited her mum, dad and grandma in Kyiv in July and October of last year.

On the first visit in the summer, it seemed fairly normal and although it is a dangerous place currently, Lisa and her family were not harmed.

On the second visit, Lisa was only kilometres away from explosions that happened during a missile strike.

She said: ‘It has been a year and it is still very hard to process that your whole life is in Ukraine, and it’s frozen, it’s not going anywhere and you have to do everything here from scratch.

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‘It was October 9 and I was going back to Ukraine at 7am and I am in Kyiv in my own flat with my family and then I think it was 10am a massive missile strike started in the centre of Kyiv so it was a couple of kilometres away from my house and imagine being somewhere safe for a some time and your brain started to process ‘okay now you’re safe, there’s no danger around you anymore’ and then you come home and think ‘oh I think it’s coming to an end’ and you are all optimistic about seeing your family and then you open your eyes to explosions that are happening 2km from your house. I looked at my mum and I was like ‘what do you think it was - thunder?’ and then there was a second explosion and my mum was like ‘I don’t think it’s thunder’.It was terrifying there were six or seven explosions on that day.’

Ukraine has approximately 500,000 troops fighting in the war as of 2023, and they have been successfully fighting over the past year.

The picture is currently very different compared to the initial stages of the war when Russian tanks surged across the Ukrainian border, and whilst neither countries are close to their war goals - Ukraine continues to fight back.

February 24, 2023 will mark a year since the invasion took place, and Lisa is fearful that there will be another major missile strike from the Russians in an attempt to make a statement to the military.

Lisa added: ‘We are really afraid of what this March can bring to us because it has been a year and we are expecting that something really bad will happen on the anniversary because the Russians showed us that they are planning attacks on proper days like Ukraine Independence Day, New Year’s Eve, Christmas or anything so we are expecting new attacks as well, and we are ready for it. I am in touch with my family every possible minute.

‘I have already lost six friends in this war and only four of them were soldiers, two of them were civilians and right now understanding that something like that can happen again, my brain just can’t do that.’