As events around the world mark one-year since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, Azucena Mugnier meets the refugees who made Nottingham their new home.
When the first explosion came, at around 10am, on February 24, 2022, Liliia Kozlovska found herself hiding in the hallway of her flat with her family.
Her husband’s gun was loaded and next to them, ready to shoot if needed.
The 44-year-old mum-of-one remembers waking up that day, seeing planes in the sky but struggling to find out what was happening.
Neighbours had even already started to move while others queued for supplies at petrol stations, cashing machines and grocery stores.
Nobody knew how long or how quickly things could develop.
Now after a year of war, Liliia is sharing her story of leaving everything she knew behind to protect her 12-year-old daughter from the horrors of war.
“The first news about the occupation was about raping of small girls and, when I thought about my daughter, I could not stay there if the next day someone came to my house and did this to her,” says former teacher Liliia Kozlovska as she sits in Nottingham’s Ukraine Cultural Centre on Mansfield Road.
“The war is something we thought belonged to our grandparents’ generation, not the 21st Century.
“Some of our friends even moved before the invasion.
“They moved from the country, but we thought: ‘Oh, you are crazy, this will never happen’.
“Everybody started to write news from different parts, we heard explosions, our relatives started leaving Kyiv…
“It was awful because it was in one moment from all parts.”
Bombs started destroying her neighbours’ houses leaving only huge holes in the floor.
Liliia knew she had to be strong for her daughter.
After more than a week fearing the next explosion might strike their flat in Zhytomyr, about two hours drive west of Kyiv, she found space on a bus headed toward the Polish border.
The pair waited for nearly ten hours – thankful they were waiting on the bus and not outside in the freezing weather like many others – before crossing the border.
Liliia carried with her the few items she knew she would need to keep her family afloat.
Her laptop so she could try to work as an online tutor, vital documents and a few clothes.
“When I was crossing the border, my laptop was, I think, the most expensive thing because I understood that I needed to work,” adds Liliia
They both stayed in Gdynia, Poland, in a one-bedroom flat for two months before being told that they either had to leave or go back to Ukraine.
One evening Kozlovska decided to register with a volunteer organisation named Opora in the hopes of finding a sponsor in the United Kingdom under the Homes for Ukraine (HfU) scheme.
HfU allowed British people to open their homes to Ukrainians who needed accommodation.
The next morning, March 19, she had already received between 20 to 30 offers.
Very overwhelmed, Liliia still cannot understand why the people of Britain were this open-hearted to her and her daughter.
The pair then faced an anxious 30-day wait for their applications to the scheme to be processed and their visas issued.
Platform chronicled the process in a round-the-clock liveblog that captured the experience of the sponsor and Liliia as they waited for a response from the scheme.
While scared, Kozlovska and her daughter were received in the UK with open arms by their sponsor when they landed at Doncaster airport.
“I wrote in my form that I am a teacher and that I wanted to find people who are working in this field because it’s easier to understand people with similar thoughts, with similar views,” adds Liliia.
“I had a panic attack on the airplane.
“I realised that I was flying to a country where I didn’t know anybody.
“I thought what am doing, I am on an island, I don’t know anybody here, and my daughter needs me.”
Her husband – who had a medical exemption from military service – left a couple of months later, in April, and moved to Scotland.
After living in Zhytomyr for the past 40 years, she is trying to rebuild a life of her own in the United Kingdom and hopes her family will soon be able to reunite.
Currently completing a teaching assistant course, Liliia and her husband are hoping to be able to rent a house of their own in the next few months.
Nonetheless, Ukraine remains her land, and her family will only be completed when they all return home.
Kozlovska said: “You asked what is common in all Ukrainians.
“I think they are broken inside.
“They can smile, but inside, they are broken.”
Liliia describes feeling constant pain for her nation and wishes for a calm life back with no more deaths.
While Liliia journeyed to the United Kingdom, other Brits were working to support the Ukrainian cause in any way they could.
Steve Palmer, 51, is part of Notts Ukraine Solidarity Campaign and a North Atlantic Fellas Organization (NAFO) member.
Born and bred in Nottingham he has organised marches and protests around the city.
Since the start of the war, Steve has organised around seven or eight protests which hundreds of people have attended.
And he played an important part in the commemoration.
He is confident that Ukraine can win this war if they can get support.
“The only way it can end is through total liberation of Ukraine, including Crimea,” he says.
“This thing needs to end, stop.
“You can’t have any deals, sort of conflict areas that are still occupied by Russians, it will never end.”
Steve considers this war, a clear sign that people still have not learned from the past.
History is repeating itself, and social media is his most powerful weapon.
Along with fellow NAFO members, he posts memes and pushes back against Russian disinformation as much as possible.
The dad is very admirative of Ukrainians and will be visiting the country as soon as it is possible.
“People have had to escape, and yet they just carry on,” he says.
“When you look into your own life and the problems that you are having, it puts all that into perspective because those people are coming from a bloody hell.
“Maybe they have lost family members, they’ve got loved ones fighting on the front lines, yet they still got the courage to get on with their lives and then to get involved and do stuff.”
What might be seen and considered as courage by some is for Kozlovska the only way Ukrainians have, to keep going and save their nation and relatives.
Katya Biliaieva, 35, mother of a five-year-old son, said similar words.
After moving from Kyiv to Odesa a couple of days before for work reasons, the explosions started.
For this Katya and her family, the bombs started around 4am and did not allow them to get any sleep.
Buildings on fire, uncontrollable vibrations, and messages from her relatives wondering if they were okay was Biliaieva’s routine for three days straight.
On the fourth day, all three of them left and travelled for many months around Europe before finally being able to arrive in Nottingham.
Katya’s husband is currently working in the military while she volunteers in the City Hospital to support Ukraine in any form possible.
The Biliaieva family is hoping to find a flat for the three of them soon and does not see themselves going back any time soon.
And while her son is adapting to life in England with very few difficulties, Kozlovska’s daughter seems to be, on the contrary, very homesick.
Liliia is unable to promise her young girl that they will go back home soon, no matter how much she wishes she could.
“I said before the war: ‘I promise you nothing will happen’.
“And she said: ‘You once promised me that nothing will happen…’
“It was very hard. I try not to promise her anything now.”