The young couple who ended up living in the newly refurbished flat above Lazonby village hall after the invasion of their home country have spoken of the warm welcome they have received in Eden.
Maks Kravtson and Vlada Dorokhina, both aged 20, were students living at their parents’ homes in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital city, when Russia attacked and they quickly started exploring options for leaving the country.
They headed west and stayed in Poland for several weeks while waiting for visas to come to the UK, where Vlada’s mother is a university professor, and then found themselves heading for Lazonby.
They arrived a few days apart in late November and early December last year — “carrying their lives in Ukraine in suitcases” — to find the flat they were destined to live in above Lazonby’s village hall was not quite ready for them.
However, they received a friendly welcome from villagers Karen and Geoff Sharp, who invited the couple into their home to stay until the new accommodation was ready.
Maks said: “This is a nice place and people here have been very kind. We arrived with just what we had carried from Ukraine — no summer clothes or anything — and people have given us everything we needed.”
He and Vlada found it rather a shock to their system moving from a bustling capital city to an Eden village, but say it is nice to be able to enjoy nature and farmed countryside — all of which certainly helps to relieve mental stress.
Their first Christmas away from home might have been a sad occasion, but Carol Cutting, who chairs the village hall committee, invited them into her home for a traditional meal at which they sampled what to them were novel items, such as roast potatoes and Yorkshire pudding. They were also struck by the British custom of wearing paper hats and reading out jokes from crackers.
Vlada says they enjoyed the lovely Christmas meal, although it was quite different from what they would have had back home — probably a dozen or so courses, with baked duck as the main highlight.
In general, the cuisine of Ukraine is one of the things they miss most. They are continuing their study of international economics at Kyiv’s Taras Chevchenko International University — online — and also manage to keep in touch with family and friends. These include Vlada’s father, who is a soldier in the bitterly disputed area around Bakhmut, in Ukraine’s Donbas region.
Both say everybody in Ukraine is feeling under pressure, with a lot of frustration and stress in evidence, although some parts of the huge country are a lot worse off than others. “In some places unemployment is at 30 per cent and there is hardly any money for people to buy things,” said Maks.
They have no firm plans for what they will do in the future, but have been impressed by the UK — the friendliness of its people and the opportunities it has to offer. They also believe their families will be much happier knowing they are in a safe place.
Vlada added: “We would like to thank everyone here in Lazonby. We have met such lovely people here — Carol, Karen and Geoff, everyone really.”
