Holocaust survivor who endured Nazis and Stalin's famine flees Ukraine invasion for safety in UK

ITV News Correspondent Sejal Karia reports on a British family's battle to bring their 90-year-old Ukrainian Holocaust survivor grandma to the UK

As a young girl, Kateryna Razumenko fled the horrors of the Nazis and survived the Holocaust. 

She also survived the "Holodomor" - Joseph Stalin's "terror famine" in the early 1930's - during which millions of Ukrainians were deliberately starved to death.

Now aged 90, she has fled once again, this time from the barbarity of Putin's bombs.

Her beloved city of Kharkiv, where she was born in 1931, has been under constant and intense shelling by Russian forces since the invasion began at the end of February.

One shell landing just metres from her 7th floor apartment she shares with her 62-year-old daughter Larysa, who is disabled.

It was at this point, they were convinced by family to leave, carrying just a handbag each and their cat, Solomon.

They left all their other possessions behind, but most difficult, was leaving their home. Their place of security and safety which became a risk to their lives, after the missiles began to land.  

Russian bombs have already destroyed several residential buildings in Ukraine's second biggest city.

Many have been reduced to rubble and ruin. And among this decimation, are lives lived in fear from the next bombardment.

Or like millions across Ukraine, they are lives left behind and escaped from. With no idea if and when they will be returned to. 

For Kateryna and Larysa, the fear of staying was greater than that of leaving.

They had no idea where they would go and how they would get anywhere. Like so many elderly and disabled people who have been forced to flea Ukraine.

Helping the elderly women though, was Larysa's daughter and Kateryna's granddaughter, Katya, who lives in north London.

She left Ukraine in 2015 but still had many contacts and friends there. Many helped her chart their route West by train. Across the breadth of Ukraine.

"I just want to support them": Katya tells ITV News London how she feels about her Ukrainian family coming to the UK

Others helped by arranging transport for the women to get to the station and helping them onto the trains, packed with people also fleeing from the war.

More helped them on their onward journey on a bus to the Polish border.

After hours and hours of travelling, the two women and their cat, Solomon made it across to Poland. After hours of waiting in a long line of people also trying to get to safety.

Kateryna had left her home country for the first time in her life and become a refugee.

Here, a Jewish Community Centre that had turned itself into a makeshift refuge for the hundreds looking to them for help, welcomed them in with hot meals and somewhere to sleep.

But the women were desperate to get to the UK and to their daughter, Katya.

The UK's lengthy visa delays meant they were stuck. Trapped for a week waiting to be processed by the Home Office.  

Katya's husband, Zac Newman then travelled to the Polish town of Otwock, just outside Warsaw, trying to bring his grandmother-in-law, mother-in-law and their pet cat, Solomon, to the UK.

After their family's direct pleas for Priti Patel, the Home Secretary to intervene, their case was escalated, fast-tracked and granted visas within 24 hours.

They have now flown to the UK, arriving in Heathrow to safety and a much welcome embrace from their family.

But the war now overwhelming their beloved Ukraine has once again revived the anguish of past conflicts.

They hope to return to their home, to their city of Kharkiv, to their beloved homeland as soon as it is safe to do so. 

But like so many who have fled, they also wonder, when? And to what?

The family has set up a fundraising page to help cover the cost of the journey to the UK, and help Kateryna Razumenko rebuild her life in the UK. A link can be found here.