A Ukrainian playboy - who organised the infamous Butt Squad snaps in Dubai - has been left distraught after becoming stranded in Cyprus with some of the women.
Vitaliy Grechin was celebrating a five-day 42nd birthday party with Russian and Ukrainian girls, many of whom he has been friends with for many years.
However, Vitaliy's dream turned into hell as war broke out in his home country.
Tragically, the girls, aged between 18 and 23, have been left in "despair" with almost half losing friends and family on both sides of the conflict.
Vitaliy, who was based in Kyiv, Ukraine said: "It's really tough you know, it's really tough. It's also tough being cut off from the businesses, banking, family, everything else in Ukraine. We're seeing a country being torn to pieces, people's lives being taken and their futures destroyed.
"It also became a mission of saving these people from the warzone with almost all of them crying, saying that people they know have died."
The businessman is perhaps best known for being jailed in Dubai last year after a raunchy snap surfaced of 17 women posing naked overlooking the UAE skyline - which is akin to blasphemy in the strict country.
Nicknamed the 'Butt Squad', some of the girls present in Dubai are also now with Vitaliy in Cyprus. He decided to celebrate his latest birthday in style by inviting tens of beautiful women to a Cypriot villa to celebrate with him.
However, when Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, on the day after his birthday, the group were effectively stranded, with flights cancelled to both countries.
Vitaliy said: "My world changed in the middle of the night when three crying girls ran into my room waking me up at 5.30 and saying that Kyiv was being bombed.
"Immediately it went from a birthday party to a state of uncertainty and despair with everybody not believing the surreal situation."
Despite their families fighting being caught on different sides of the war, he said that the girls get along extremely well.
Vitaliy's family and friends, including his wife and 14-year-old son have spent five days trying to escape Ukraine by car. They had attempted to wait out the invasion, before fleeing to Europe.
He worries deeply for his son and other children experiencing war so young and it having an impact on their future. His home in Irpin, just outside Kyiv, has been destroyed by mortar fire.
Vitaliy said: "This type of situation completely destroys people's lives, people's years of building something, whether it's a house or business or stable environment for the family."
And Vitaliy's party was intended to go on for five days, with his actual birthday on 23 February - the day before the Russian invasion of his home country.
A US passport holder, pictures show him posing next to ex-US president Barack Obama alongside a-list celebrities including George Clooney and Gwyneth Paltrow. With the girls having a chance to pilot planes, go for adventures on gas and oil supply boats, sail yachts and party at his three-villa complex.
He said: "The birthday party itself was spectacular, obviously.
"This atmosphere transformed immediately once the bombing started and immediately it's a life changing moment for everybody involved. They go from extreme, extreme happiness to a complete state of despair with uncertainty in the future."
However, a day later they are transformed into refugees, sitting shocked on a sofa in sweatpants.
In the meantime, Vitaliy has rented a 1,200 square metre house in a European country where the band of young women can live. Yuliia Ulianochkina, 19, came to Vitaliy's party from Ukraine, where she left her mother at home.
Having taken part in the infamous Dubai photoshoot last year, she is incredibly close to some of the girls she went through prison and court battles alongside.
She said: "A feeling of depression and despair has overtaken most of the Ukrainian girls around me, mostly because of disbelief at what is happening to our homeland.
"Every hour we hear from someone in our group, that someone they know has been killed, that a rocket or a bomb has landed somewhere near one of our homes, workplaces, or landmarks we grew up around.
"There are girls here whose homes have already been destroyed. The only thing that comforts me a little is that my mother can concentrate on her safety and not worry about me."
Another 22-year-old girl, whose family lives near the Russian capital St Petersburg, said: "I struggle to understand why my countrymen are attacking the country of my friends. We all speak the same language and laugh at the same jokes. I am shocked to see their tears."
She did not want to be named due to the threat of prosecution when she returns to Russia. She also avoids political topics with her family, who believe the propaganda broadcast by state television. Her male friends have received letters telling them to contact army recruiting officers and confirm their addresses.
Olesia said: "The first three days of the birthday celebration were an amazing rollercoaster of emotions. It seemed like a many of the girls' dreams materialised.
"When the bombing started, Ukrainian girls started calling home and crying. In most cases, they could hear the explosions on the other end of the phone. It was very scary, especially seeing almost everyone around you crying."
After 2021's scandalous naked photoshoot above Dubai, 13 of the women were held in a UAE jail alongside Vitaliy.
The women were accused of gross indecency and banned from Gulf countries for at least five years. And while he was in jail, the playboy's Kyiv offices and residences were searched by Ukrainian police. Alongside the girls, some friends and family joined Vitaliy for his party in Cyprus.
His next-door neighbour from Kyiv is there with his four-year-old daughter and pregnant wife. Vitaliy said his neighbours, along with a lot of the girls who are not from rich backgrounds, would never have been able to organise their own evacuations.
Due to the flight to Cyprus being at 10am on a Sunday morning, eight of the 50 girls he invited missed the plane. They have since rung him upset, saying that they cannot get out.
Vitaliy said: "Sometimes you get on a plane and it crashes and sometimes you don't get on the plane and the country crashes." His own funds are now running low, as cards from Ukraine and Russia are cancelled.
And with struggles with car rental companies and unable to refund cancelled plane tickets, he is prioritising his funds to make sure the people around him can eat and are sheltered.
Vitaliy said: "My father used to say that the scariest thing in the storm is the fear in the captain's eyes. I see myself as the captain taking these people through a storm which has no end in sight.
"Everything that has been built and is so fragile crumbles within a minute.
"I think nobody in the world has predicted the sheer devastation that could be inflicted by a neighbour, somebody that we consider basically the people closest to us by heritage."
