Elderly Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion have been arriving in Britain in increasing numbers over the past few months, volunteers at a refugee welcome centre have said.
A year on from the start of the full-scale war, the make-up of Ukrainians arriving to start a new life in the UK has changed.
In the months of the war the majority of arrivals were women and children, many of whom had left husbands, fathers and grandfathers behind to fight.
But as the months dragged on with little prospect of peace and colder weather bringing new anxieties for Ukrainians living with limited domestic energy supplies, older people began to leave their homes in greater numbers.
The rise in the number of pensioners arriving in Britain from the war zone has prompted the Ukrainian Welcome Centre in London to start a social club to meet their needs, which volunteers say can often be more challenging to address than those of younger refugees.
“One of the things that we have recently started is an afternoon for older people,” said Iryna Terlecky, chairwoman of the Association of Ukrainian Women.
“We found that over the last few months more older Ukrainians come over from where their families persuaded them to leave Ukraine in the winter.
One year of war in Ukraine - in pictures
“It’s particularly difficult for older people because they don’t know the language and they can feel very isolated. So we started a pilot social club for older Ukrainians where you can come and talk and sing. There will be chessboards on which they can play.
“Several of them are quite keen to help organise further sessions. That’s really positive because the more that people can do for themselves and they’ve got some agency, the less they feel lost and that everything is being done to them. So, those are huge steps forward.”
Ms Terlecky is among dozens of people who volunteer at the welcome centre at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral in Mayfair.
Born in the UK to parents who fled Ukraine during the Second World War, she said weekly classes in English language, art, pottery and psychological support are invaluable to new arrivals, many of whom are traumatised.
During a tour of the welcome centre on Thursday, director Andriy Marchenko said even after people have settled into life in the UK they still drop in to “keep connected to their Ukrainian heritage and to the Ukrainian culture, no matter how long they’re staying here”.
About 140,000 Ukrainians have entered the UK on visas since Russia invaded its neighbour last year.
In the weeks after the invasion, the UK government was criticised for delays in introducing visa schemes. But Mr Marchenko said the Tory government, then led by Boris Johnson, “responded quite well” to the demand for sanctuary.
But he said many people who arrived under the Homes for Ukraine scheme have faced upheaval due to their hosts not renewing participation after the six-month minimum period. He cited cases where guests had to quit their jobs because they could not find another host in the same area in which they had been living.
While he praised the government for increasing payments to host families amid the cost-of-living crisis, he suggested “a more decisive, a more permanent solution” was needed to prevent Ukrainians becoming homeless.
He appealed to British households to come forward to offer up a spare room or spare home for Ukrainians, but admitted many people who have never been in a situation of war find it hard to understand the desperation.
Mr Marchenko said the words of a Syrian woman who had survived the bombardment of her homeland still rang true — she told him it was impossible for anyone to imagine such an experience without having lived through it.
