Our homes are destroyed but we are the lucky ones who escaped Ukraine war
AS a loud motorbike roars through a busy street Ukrainian mum-of-two Tatiana Lytvy pulls her two young sons close to her as they tremble with fear.
It is now a year since Vladimir Putin launched his invasion and she has managed to escape to neighbouring Romania but she and her Myroslav, eight, and Denys, three, are still traumatised by the rocket raids they were forced to run from.
Tatiana, 32, was able to settle in Romania thanks to charitable donations from Brits, who raised £400 million, making the UK the largest charity donor to Ukraine in the world.
At Save The Children’s busy day centre in the capital Bucharest, the Sun on Sunday met her and the other mums who have had to leave their husbands behind to find safety for their young families.
Tatiana said: “It was too dangerous to stay in our home there.
"It was under Russian control within weeks of the invasion.
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“A rocket landed in my sister’s flat and there were huge bomb craters everywhere. The buildings were flattened.
“Sometimes there would be around 15 bombing raids a day.
"We would dash back up to the flat to grab food and blankets and then run underground again.”
She and her sons live in a tiny flat and have received vouchers for essentials like food and clothing provided by Save The Children from money donated to the UK appeal.
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Like so many of the female Ukrainian refugees in Romania, Tatiana’s husband Andriy, 34, is helping the war effort back home, in his case repairing power stations to keep the country going.
Tatiana also has an important new role.
In Kharkiv she worked as a prison guard but in Bucharest she volunteers, teaching Ukrainian to young refugees at nearby, School 73.
Although Ukrainian curriculum lessons are provided online by their own government many of the children have started speaking Romanian.
She said: “I am so grateful to the generous people in your country who have given money to help us.
“It has been such a massive help. Even though we are safe here, and we can just about get by, I cannot wait for the war to be over so we can go back to our country.
“Everywhere around our home is destroyed but I will be there to rebuild our country. I know that those of us who escaped are the lucky ones.”
Tatiana is one of three million who have already entered Romania.
Nearly all of them are women and children because men aged between 18 and 60 are barred from leaving under martial law.
The emergency appeal organised by the Disasters Emergency Committee for 15 major charities - including British Red Cross and Oxfam - broke records.
It has also enabled Save The Children to provide childcare for mums so they can go to work and Romanian lessons to assist them in finding employment.
And they are giving young refugees important counselling and providing safe facilities in which they can play and learn.
They include eight-year-old Malia Pavlenko.
Her mum Nadiia, 30, tells how Malia has autism and misses their home in heavily-bombarded Mykolaiv so much that the little girl’s grandmother Anushka gives her regular video tours of her old bedroom on WhatsApp calls.
Nadiia told us: “My mother has stayed because she is receiving treatment for cancer which means she cannot move. My grandmother, who is 86, is there too and they are living in our home.
“My mother was living in a ten-storey apartment block and that was destroyed by two rockets.
“She calls Malia to reassure her. Malia’s autism means she needs everything to be in place and now she wants to see that her favourite toys are still there in her drawer.
“Before we never really left the house much and we only travelled in our own car.
“We resisted leaving for as long as possible.
“But there was bombing every day for eight months. Now when she sees a plane here, she asks me, ‘Will it shoot us?’.
“We resisted until we were watching them land right in front of our building at four in the morning.
“I couldn’t believe Russian tanks were actually right there in front of us - in the 21st century, I would never have believed it. I took only two bags with us.
“In Mykolaiv they have no running water, no electricity and no heating.
“People here in Romania have been so kind to us from the very beginning. We are lucky. It’s so kind, but we want our own life back again.”
Gwen Hines, Chief Executive of the charity, says the refugees are “blown away” by the generosity of the British public.
She said: “The needs are massive; it’s the largest movement of people since the Second World War.
"They don’t want to be refugees, they are homesick, but they also want to make the best life for their children here.”
Indira Kvit, 25, is working for the charity to assist new arrivals in getting used to their new surroundings.
But she admits that she has spent every day of the last 12 months fearing she would receive the news that her husband Oleksandr, 26, had been killed and would have to break the news to their six-year-old Zina.
She told the Sun on Sunday: “Before, everything was pretty quiet and I had a good job as a pharmacy manager.
“My husband had a good job too and we had a nice apartment.
"Our daughter was in a nice nursery. I had everything I could want to have. It was a perfect life really.
“I woke up at 5am on the morning of February 24th last year to the blast of the rockets destroying military installations in Odessa.
“Oleksandr told me I had to go with our daughter because it was just getting too dangerous.
"The decision was made to protect her more than anything else.
“We speak on the phone every day and he is always very positive about the future.
"All I know is he is somewhere on the frontline in the Donbas; he’s not allowed to tell me where he is.”
But earlier this month she did manage to see him - just for a few moments.
In an unexpected romantic surprise, he surprised her by heading to the border last week to see her, knowing that she was heading there to drop off supplies for family members still in Odessa.
He got a few days leave from the resistance campaign in the Donbas region to give her a kiss just before Valentine’s Day.
She said: “When I saw him at the border it was just so emotional, both of us were in tears.
“I don’t tell Zina that he’s in the war; I just say that daddy is away for work.
"She has adapted so quickly. By September last year she was speaking Romanian with the other children, far better than I can.
"My dream is for both of us to be able to go back home.”
There are still up to 10,000 Ukranians heading into Romania every single day with an uncertain future.
Most arrive at Bucharest North railway station.
There this week Olena Kravchenko, 31, and her daughter Marina, two, headed to a dedicated child-friendly space to meet representatives from Save The Children.
On the station wall there is a reminder of the everyday dangers she and other war victims face; a sign in Ukrainian warns of being approached by people posing as police officers with fake uniforms.
It follows reports of people traffickers preying on them.
But Olena said: “It is safer here. We are living here until the war ends.
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"It was just far too dangerous. That’s why I am so grateful to Save The Children. When we arrived here we had no one at all.”
For more information about Save the Children’s work in Ukraine, visit: