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.
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 leave everything behind when the war with Russia began, but has rebuilt her life in the UK after receiving a visa.
Yana has established her own fashion business in the UK, which has five brands in its portfolio, more than 120 wholesale partners and, Smaglo says, a £120,000 turnover.
Yana poses in one of her Ukrainian-made designer coats at Almscliffe Crag, near Harrogate, Yorkshire. 'Local people really helped me as I was trying to grow the business,' she says
'It's hard to explain to yourself that, no, you don't have anything any more, you need to buy, you need to work hard,' says Yana Smaglo. 'It's hard emotionally'
'But at that moment, you're so shocked and scared, you think only about saving yourself. I understood that to save myself physically, I didn't need anything.'
Yana is nonetheless a born entrepreneur and, even in extremis, her natural enterprise did not desert her. Snatching a few handbags, she stuffed them in her backpack, realising she could sell them if she needed 'quick money'.
That resourcefulness would serve her well once she had made her way across Poland and Germany to Strasbourg, where, after a short wait, she was granted a UK visa.
Almost 6.2 million Ukrainian refugees have fled across Europe since the Russian invasion began, with the UK among a cluster of major host countries that includes Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic.
Those who sought sanctuary in Britain were able to take advantage of government initiatives enabling Ukrainians already in the country to extend their visas, and for family members to join them.
There was also a sponsorship programme, Homes for Ukraine, under which UK householders received a monthly payment of £350 – rising to £500 after the first year – in return for hosting refugees.
Statistically speaking, these various schemes were a notable success. Research conducted by the University of Oxford's Migration Observatory suggests the number of Ukrainians living in the UK has quadrupled since the conflict began, rising from 41,000 in 2021 to roughly 160,000 by this summer.
In February, the government announced that Ukrainians initially granted three years to remain in the UK would be able to apply for an 18-month visa extension, ensuring Britain remained 'a safe haven for those fleeing the conflict'.