A woman who fled Ukraine to Nottingham says her "worst fears" are for that of her ill father who is trapped in Russian-occupied Kherson alongside her mother, sister and five-year-old niece. Zhenia Myronenko's concerns for her diabetic father, 60, who also has a heart problem, are growing each day as Ukraine's counter-offensive stalls in the southern reaches of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
Thousands of Ukrainians remain trapped under Russian military control in southern territory, which includes the city of Kherson, nestled on the banks of the Dnipro River and near the border of Crimea, annexed by Russian president Vladimir Putin in 2014. Kherson's elected mayor Ihor Kolykhaiev has been dismissed from his post for a reported 'lack of cooperation', and a pro-Russian government has been installed following a series of sham referendums.
Exactly a month ago on Monday, August 29, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced his forces would be launching a counter-offensive with the aim of reclaiming Kherson, as well as territory in the Donbas to the East. While his forces have been making solid progress in the north-east, Ms Myronenko's family in the south are yet to be liberated a month later.
The 36-year-old arrived in Nottinghamshire having escaped Ukraine earlier this year, and today lives with a host family in Cotgrave. Her family were not so fortunate, their survival supplies and health are dwindling.
"My parents cannot leave the city because everything is blocked," she says. "Aeroplanes are flying over every day and they fly near to the ground.
"It is horrible. My niece worries they will get bombed and my sister says she holds her hands to her ears."
Fortunately, her family managed to move from their home in the centre of Kherson to a summer-house on the banks of the river. Here they have been holding out for months.
Each night they hear Russian boats travelling up and down the river, under the cover of darkness, as the war continues to rage. Ms Myronenko's father, however, is not faring so well.
He suffers from type-2 diabetes and has a heart condition where the organ becomes enlarged. Most Ukrainian doctors fled the region before its occupation, and they have since been replaced by Russian counterparts.
The same has been done in schools, with reports of books replaced with pro-Russian propaganda and children forced to be taught by Russian teachers. And Ukrainian men in these occupied regions are now being called up to fight against their own.
"They are lucky because my father prepared for the winter," Ms Myronenko's added. "So they already had enough coal and they have water.
"But my father needs medicine, but nothing is working and all of our doctors in the hospitals have left. My father says he wants to wait for the Ukrainian army because they are Russian doctors now, he does not trust, and he does not want to give them his money.
"If something happens to my father I cannot say goodbye. That is my worst fear. I feel hopeless."
When Putin ordered his forces in on February 24 this year Ms Myronenko, a former production assistant for Ukraine national TV, managed to move to Lviv in western Ukraine. Here she was given the opportunity to travel with a friend to Krakow, Poland, where she settled at a refugee camp in Galeria Plaza.
At the shopping mall-come refugee shelter she was informed of the UK Government's 'Homes for Ukraine' scheme, and while waiting for a flight out of the country, she spent more than two months organising activities for the children who had to flee their homes in Ukraine.
On September 28 Ms Myronenko visited the Job Centre in Nottingham in a bid to find work. All the while she waits in the hope that Ukraine's forces will soon manage to liberate her family from Russian control before her father becomes gravely ill.
"I believe they will one day be liberated," she adds. "We all believe it."
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