Our life in North Devon - refugees from the war in Ukraine speak on the second anniversary of the catastrophic conflict pages 23-25 It’s the largest invasion of a European country since World War II. On February 24th, 2022 Russian troops marched into Ukraine in an escalation of the conflict which started back in 2014. Two years on, it is estimated to have caused tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilian casualties and hundreds of thousands in the military. More than 8 million people have fled the country creating Europe’s worst refugee crisis since the Second World War. Some like Olena, her husband Andrii and mother Tamara (pictured right) settled here in North Devon, and still live with their host family in South Molton who she describes as “the best in the world”. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said recently that he fears Ukraine is being forgotten, as the war reached a deadly stalemate in the frigid winter weather. There’s a 600 mile front line that has barely moved in months. Fighting is taking place in trenches reminiscent of the First World War.
Olena’s 21 months in South Molton “Every morning we start our day by watching a family group online, waiting and hoping for good news from Ukraine. Sometimes we all don’t sleep at night, because there is a massive missile attack on our home of Zaporozhye, and it just tears our souls apart from the pain inside,” Olena Subocheva told Molton Monthly. “The situation is critical. Our city has serious damage to many residential buildings and its infrastructure.”
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