A MAN living in Kyiv with his family said he will not be "bullied out of his home" as Russian forces continue to invade Ukraine.
Brighton-born Dan Baker has been sheltering in a basement with his wife Victoria, 12-year-old stepdaughter Veronica and their cat Pumpkin.
He said their part of the city has remained relatively quiet, only punctured by the sound of air raid sirens, but supermarkets yesterday were busy with people as a curfew briefly came to an end.
He said: "It was a bit of an ordeal - it took us two hours to get into the supermarket. There was no bread, there was no milk, but we got some cream because we can water it down and we have a breadmaker, so we can load ourselves up with the essentials.
"While we were in the queue, the sirens went off again - twice. Nobody moved, getting fed was obviously more important than running away."
Despite the conditions, Dan has no plans to leave the city.
"This is our home - we’ve got an apartment, we’ve got a brand new car and we’re doing well over here," he said.
"I’m not going to be bullied out of my home. I don’t want to sound obstinate or flippant, but it is something I feel very strongly about.
"If it happened in England, if the roles were reversed, would you run away?"
Dan has been documenting life under siege in Kyiv in a series of YouTube videos. Initially, he planned on making the videos as a way of letting his family know he was all right.
He said: "I was getting so many messages from friends and family and I thought I would just do a video update to send to everybody so I wouldn’t have to keep typing to them.
"I then realised I could appeal to a lot more people and I would like to get people to share what is really happening, as not every news outlet is telling the truth."
His videos document day-to-day life in the capital, gaining as many as 1,500 subscribers in 24 hours.
Dan said he was left shocked by the outbreak of war last week, and had not expected that a full-scale invasion would take place.
He said: "When Putin recognised the ‘breakaway republics’ in Donetsk and Luhansk, I thought that it had escalated a bit and might go wrong, but when I went to sleep on Wednesday evening, I had no inclination that I would wake up at 4am to missiles.
"I heard two explosions in my sleep, but I thought the cat had knocked something off the table - you don’t think they’re going to be missiles.
"My wife was on the phone to her sister, who also lives in Kyiv, and she said war had started.
"I just woke up completely - panic set in to begin with. I thought it wasn’t real, and we were panicking for the first day because I knew how crucial the first 24 hours are in an armed conflict situation.
"It was getting scary as they were getting closer and closer - they were only ten miles outside Kyiv but the Ukrainians held them back - they’re heroes."
Dan also praised Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, and said he thinks of him as "a clown who turned into a legend".
Zelensky had previously been a comedian, with a TV show where he played a character who became president of Ukraine.
Despite the bombardments of Kyiv and air raid sirens, Dan said his step-daughter has adapted to life in war.
"She's got an iPad with TikTok and Roblox, and she's happy she doesn't have to go to school. Children are resilient, especially the ones over here - they're a different breed," he said.
Dan criticised the UK government’s lack of action on helping refugees fleeing Ukraine, asking why restrictions preventing those without links to Britain are in place.
"Logistically it might be a bit of a nightmare, but Poland has done it - why not the UK?" he said.
Home Secretary Priti Patel told the House of Commons that an extension to visa conditions will allow an extra 100,000 Ukrainians to seek sanctuary in the UK.
She said: "We are enabling Ukrainian nationals already in the UK, giving them the ability to switch free of charge into a points-based immigration route or through the family visa route.
"We are extending visas for (Ukraine) temporary workers in some sectors and they can now stay until at least December 2022."
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