Sheffield: Refugee family praise for host city

More than 700 Ukrainian people have been welcomed to Sheffield over the last year including the Romaniukha family

A family who fled Ukraine after the Russian invasion began one year ago have praised the kindness of British people.

Pavlo Romaniukha, 41, moved to Sheffield in May 2022 with his wife Rymma Parkhomenko-Romaniukha, 31, and their 10-year-old son.

The family moved into a house in the Netherthorpe area where Mr Romaniukha found work as a fork-lift driver.

Mr Romaniukha said English people were "like an example of kindness."

When the Russians invaded Ukraine on 24 February Mr Romaniukha was working in Poland.

His wife and son stayed in western Ukraine for two months until they decided it was too dangerous and fled to join him.

They decided to move to South Yorkshire from a Polish refugee centre after getting in touch with sponsors from Sheffield through the website established to pair up displaced Ukrainians with UK families.

'We could die every minute'

Mr Romaniukha said many people had helped them since they arrived in Sheffield, especially the sponsor family who put them up, helped them find jobs and a house of their own, and even invited them back for Christmas.

His son who is in Year 6 at the local primary school, said he was frightened during the two months before he and his mother left their home.

He said: "There was always a lot of time with the sound of alarms for bombs going to our city.

"We were waiting in the corridor in the flat or going to school because they had a place to hide from the bombs.

"The Russians could shoot at schools and we could die every minute, so we were so scared."

Mr Romaniukha said he had just over two years left on his permission to stay in the UK and he hopes his family would have the option to stay after that.

Heaping more praise on the kindness the family has been shown in South Yorkshire he said: "English people open their houses to strangers."