What happened to Britain's Ukrainians? Successful fashion tycoon, Olympic team manager who found love on Tinder and the woman who returned reveal what happened after UK opened its homes and hearts to the refugees of Putin's war By LES ROOPANARINE Published: 03:21 EST, 26 December 2024 | Updated: 03:21 EST, 26 December 2024 e-mail View comments Three years after moving from her native Kharkiv to forge a new path in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv , Yana Smaglo was doing nicely. A gifted businesswoman with an insatiable work ethic, she had her own fashion and beauty operation, a nice apartment and an office in the city centre. Life was good.
'It was settled, nice, a comfortable life,' says Yana, who is now 32. 'I was very happy.' On 24 February 2022, shortly after 5am, everything changed.
Yana awoke to the sound of explosions; the long foreshadowed war with Vladimir Putin 's Russia had begun. She hurriedly called her friends to waken them. One planned to drive west, towards the border with Poland , and invited her to come along.
In an instant, Yana's survival instinct kicked in. She grabbed a hat, stuffed a few belongings into a small rucksack – documents, cash, a laptop – and rushed from her home. In the most literal sense, she was closing the door on life as she knew it.
'When I left my apartment I thought that, probably, I would never see it again,' says Yana, before pausing to add ruefully: 'I also lost the business. Ukrainian fashion designer Yana Smaglo was forced to le.
