A mum pregnant with twins has spoken of her dreams of seeing her husband again after the war in Ukraine split her family apart. Elena Malenko fled from Kyiv to stay with relatives in the UK when war broke out.
Her husband Grygorii is a member of Kyiv City Council, placing the family "on the Russian hitlist". The former diplomat and language teacher had started packing in December after seeing pictures of Russian troops gathering at the border.
And they were ready to flee the next day when a Russian missile fell on a neighbouring house. The city was full of people heading to railway stations as the family made their way west, towards the safety of the Polish border.
With visas granted through the Homes for Ukraine scheme, the Malenko family flew to Liverpool and "an unknown future" with relatives they'd never met before. Elena was "excited, scared and nervous", telling the Liverpool Echo: "When I arrived, I saw that life is so beautiful and peaceful, and people in the parks, they don't think about it constantly.
"They are not demoralised and they are not depressed. It was only here, in this house, that I started laughing again, and I started dancing. I realised I hadn't done it for a long time, since the first day of war. I couldn't laugh, I couldn't dance, I couldn't sing. Only when I was here in a loving family, I then relaxed."
But just three weeks later, Elena started feeling sick and discovered she is pregnant with two girls. She "cried with happiness" at the news, but now four months pregnant, she's desperate to see Grygorii instead of picking baby names in separate countries.
"I know I'm a strong woman and I do a lot of things, but doing the same with him, together, when I can touch him by the hand and just feel his presence, is totally different," she said.
Elena said: "We had a really happy and beautiful life before the war in Ukraine. We had so many plans, we travelled a lot, we planned to have more kids, we started building a house, we had a business. And then in one day, everything changed."
"Terrified", Elena sought refuge in a hotel in the mountains west of Kyiv with her two sons - seven-year-old Platon, and Lev, five. Elena told the ECHO: "I left Grygorii with a feeling I might never see him again, but I needed save my children."
Grygorii visited them regularly while they were still in Ukraine, but in June, as it became clear the war would not be short, the "exhausted" Elena decided they could no longer live "with continuous sirens running to the bomb shelter and back". She wanted her sons to have enough time to settle into a new country before starting the new school year in September, so they crossed the border to Poland.
The 36-year-old sometimes feels "quite challenged by the circumstances of life". But living with her cousin Nadia in Mossley Hill, Elena has "found shelter in this beautiful city" she notes for "kindness and friendliness".
She said: "I feel supported by the family. I know I have a home, I have a lot of people around me who are willing to help me, to give me buggies and carriers for the babies and to help me with my boys, to take them to school, to feed them, to take them to football sessions. So I won't be alone."
Elena had grown up with stories about the eldest and youngest of 11 brothers of the Hudaly family, raised by a rabbi or scribe, who left Ukraine for a new life in England 100 years ago. Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire in the early 20th century, a period when tens of thousands of Jewish people were killed in pogroms.
The 36-year-old said: "My granny and my grandpa told me they were somewhere in England, and one day you will find them. I was always laughing at that, because without knowing their names, their addresses, their telephone, numbers, emails, how can we find them?"
A DNA test three years ago revealed relatives in Liverpool, the descendants of those two brothers who opened a dental practice here a century ago. They'd lost contact with relatives in Ukraine due to controls on post in the Soviet Union, under which "many of them were murdered".
Elena is looking for their own house, and she's planning the launch their IT business - which runs a media monitoring bot used by Ukrainian politicians - in the UK.
Elena said the archives of Yad Vashem, the world Holocaust remembrance centre, revealed the Nazis had buried other relatives in mass graves during the Holocaust. She's currently waiting on DNA tests to learn whether her 50-year-old uncle, Sasha, is among the 445 people found this month at a mass burial site when Ukrainian forces recaptured Izium, a city he fought in as a volunteer.
In April, the family lost contact with him. During their search, they found "pictures of his documents, his driver's licence" along with "pictures of the body of a beheaded soldier" in a "Russian propaganda Telegram channel".
Although they couldn't identify him from the images, they've since learned he died on May 1, the day he told Elena the war would end. She said: "Maybe it is very naïve, but I still hope for him maybe to be hiding somewhere."
Her Liverpool relatives have helped Elena reconnect with Jewish culture, which her own family had to hide "just to save their lives" during the Soviet era. Now among a growing community of more than 2,000 Jewish people in Liverpool, her children get excited when they see the sunset on a Friday, the Sabbath, and they rush home for Nadia's "very beautiful dinner".
Elena said: "When I can see the rituals, the culture, the cuisine and the different traditions, it makes me related again to my ancestors." Lev and Platon are both "developing their communication skills and gaining confidence" in school, she said.
And they've "definitely benefited from playing football" in the schoolyard and park. The family has been supported by "the family, the community, the city council", receiving "bicycles, scooters and football stuff for the boys".
Now Elena, who usually plans everything is "rushing after [life], trying to grab the tail of it". But, she said: "We are very lucky and very happy now. I've realised how unpredictable life is."
