By Andrew Brown
An acclaimed violinist has spoken of how she and her two-year-old daughter fled Kyiv as indiscriminate Russian missiles rained down on their home city.
Daria Bryan, 33, and her daughter, Katie, travelled hundreds of miles to find sanctuary in Southport, where they are trying to rebuild their lives as they wonder when it will be safe to return home – or even if they will have a home to return to.
Their ordeal was made even worse by the fact that Daria’s husband, Steven, 42, was in Southport, as he applied for his permanent visa to go and live in Ukraine, when Putin’s Russia began its brutal invasion.
Daria is an accomplished violinist who has performed in venues all over the world, many of them as part of the ‘Amore Twins’ along with her twin sister, Ekaterina (Katja) Golovko.
Her electric violin was one of the items she grabbed as she fled, along with an emergency bag of possessions and papers, as she and family members ran to their car in a bid to escape the city in the early hours of the morning.
Her acoustic violin and most of the family’s other possessions sadly had to be left behind.
While becoming more settled in Southport, Daria and Steven’s daughter Katie often experiences sleepless nights, suffering from recurring nightmares. She often asks when she will see her beloved toys or her home again. It is a difficult question for her parents to be able to give her an answer to.
Daria said: “We have an app on our mobile phones which shows a camera facing our apartment in Kyiv, giving us a live feed of what is happening there. Everyday we check it to see if our home is still standing.
“People we know are losing their homes. They are losing everything.
“After hearing of the atrocities in Bucha, I got really depressed. I wanted to avoid hearing the news. I hear the news directly from my father.
“The war is awful. I really hope it is going to stop at some point. Innocent people are dying in their thousands.
“I really don’t understand why they are doing this to us.
“In Bucha, they were raping girls and boys.
“Putin has said he is not going to stop until the end. I don’t know how long he is going to go on.” Steven said: “The hardest thing for me is that this all happened while I wasn’t there.
“In some parts of the country, while they were travelling, there was no phone connection, so I had no way of knowing how they were or what was happening.”
For weeks, there had been stories of Russian troops and equipment building up on the border with Ukraine. Many believed it was merely sabre rattling, Vladimir Putin seeking to get a reaction.
Few believed it would actually lead to a full scale invasion, causing millions of refugees to flee their homes, leaving towns and cities devastated, and innocent civilians slaughtered.
Daria said: “Steven came to Southport so he could apply for his permanent visa for Ukraine.
“We were worried about the situation with the build-up of Russian troops. But I said ‘it is not going to happen’. Then it did.
“It was 5am in the morning, 3am English time, when the war started.
“I had an emergency suitcase ready just in case, which I had prepared two weeks in advance, but I never thought it would actually happen.”
The family were woken suddenly by the sound of explosions.
Daria said: “I phoned my twin sister, Ekaterina – we live in the same complex in Kyiv. My parents live there too.
“When I spoke to my sister I said ‘did you hear that’? She said ‘what do you think it was’?
“The Russians were launching missiles into Kyiv.
“After that I woke my daughter up and we got ready to leave.
“At 7am we were trying to leave Kyiv, but the traffic was unbelievable. We were in traffic for seven hours, barely moving.
“In the car we had my daughter, my parents, my sister, my nephew, and Billy, their pet chihuahua.
“The scariest moment in my life was seeing a rocket falling near us and exploding. But no-one was moving very fast because of so many cars on the road.
“We thought ‘we can’t leave Kyiv today, we have to go back’.
“We went into a basement and we stayed there overnight.”
They set off again and headed off towards the west of Ukraine, as Russians tanks and troops steadily moved into the north, east and south of the country.
Daria said: “We went to my sister’s husband’s father’s house. It took us 17 hours to get out.
“The traffic was horrible. Everyone was trying to escape.
“We were trying to get across the border to anywhere we could – Poland, Romania, Moldova, Hungary.
“The queue to get in was seven days long.
“We got near the border with Romania and we just left our car where it was and walked. We would have been five days in the car if we had stayed in it.
“Finally, we got there. The people in Romania were amazing.
“All I had with me was one suitcase, my violin and Katie. But it wasn’t too bad for us compared to others. There were people who left with nothing, who were travelling for seven days who didn’t have any food.
“Straight away in Romania, they gave us nappies, sim cards, food.
“They had shelters there, and a lot of volunteers.
“We stayed in Romania for two days. Then we went to Munich, and we stayed there. My sister went to Leipzig.
“My sister and I performed a concert in Germany to raise money for people affected by the war in Ukraine.
“It took us two and a half weeks to get our visa for the UK.
“Lots of our friends really struggled to get their visas sorted out. Some took as long as eight weeks, some took a few days. It was really random.
“When we flew into Manchester Airport, there were real problems with translation. At Passport Control, staff couldn’t speak Russian or Ukrainian. I gave what help I could to people to translate what they were saying so the officials could understand.”
The family has been appreciative of the help they have received since they have been in Southport.
Daria said: “We have managed to get Katie into kindergarten here in Southport.
“With the age she is, travelling across Europe was a big adventure. For my nephew, it has been more difficult. He is seven years old, so his experience has been more challenging. “
The strong historic links between Ukraine and Russia and the people of both countries make the invasion so incomprehensible.
Daria said: “I lived in Kharkiv for 18 years, I was speaking Russian. At 18 years old I moved to Kyiv. In Ukraine, it is around 50-50 between Ukrainian and Russian speakers.”
The war has left Daria, and millions of other Ukrainians, shocked and horrified.
She said: “I never thought, in this day and age, that we would ever see a war like this, with soldiers killing innocent men, women and kids, and to keep going, and going.
“What has been happening in Mariupol, what has happened in Kharkiv, where I grew up – it has been destroyed.
“My grandparents stayed in Kharkiv for 20 days. They went to shelter in the church. But after a while they couldn’t take it any more. They took a train to Lviv in western Ukraine.”
Daria and Steven have been married for seven years. Steven was born and bred in Southport. He previously worked at the casino on Lord Street in Southport, before working on cruise ships travelling the world.
He met Daria on board one of the ships, and they married in 2015, before enjoying the birth of their daughter Katie in 2019.
They loved their life in Ukraine. They are currently staying with family in Southport while they wait to see what happens next.
Steven Bryan said: “The people of Southport have been amazing. There have been so many fundraising events held here to help people in Ukraine.
“We have had friends who have donated toys, clothes, and books to us.
“The nursery where we got our daughter into was fully booked, but they managed to find a place for us because of our circumstances.
“She likes to play, she loves to be with other children.”
Now they are keen to do what they can to help others.
The couple called in to see the recent Southport Artists For Ukraine event which was held at Southport Market.
They are delighted to see events taking place locally to support Ukrainian refugees.
Daria and her sister are looking forward to staging a fundraising event in Munich on 18th-20th May, and are keen to do what they can to help any families fleeing Ukraine and looking to settle in the Southport area.
Daria said: “We just want to give something back. We want to do what we can to help people affected by the war in Ukraine.”
Do you have a story for Stand Up For Southport? Please message Andrew Brown via Facebook here or email me at: mediaandrewbrown@gmail.com
