Fareham mum launches rescue mission to Poland to help bring her trapped mother home from Ukraine

Ukrainian national Hanna Greentree, of Fareham, has been desperately trying to secure a visa from the Home Office to allow her 65-year-old mother Iryna Pavlova to flee to the UK after Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered his forces to invade.

Hopes had been raised when on Sunday, prime minister Boris Johnson announced the UK would welcome immediate family members of Ukrainians living in the UK but who had families still trapped in their home country.

But Mrs Greentree said the process of getting her mum out of the city Kharkiv – which has been under siege since the invasion began and was this morning hit by a deadly cruise missile strike in Freedom Square – was too difficult.

The 43-year-old was critical of Britain’s response to Ukrainians refugees and said she waiting for hours to speak to Home Office officials, who told her that her mother needed to flee Poland before they could step in and help.

Now, a frustrated Mrs Greentree is preparing to fly out to the Polish city of Kraków where she hopes to drive to the border to meet her mother, secure her a visa and transport her to safety in Fareham.

Holding back tears, the distraught mother-of-one told The News: ‘I hate [home secretary] Priti Patel. I hate the immigration here. I don’t understand why they are doing this. It is cruel on humanity.

‘Britain says Ukrainians are “welcome”. When you say “you’re welcome” that means you open the door. But for now the doors are still closed.

‘I spent 90 minutes on the phone trying to get through to someone. They said that she has to apply for a Visa and needs to get to Poland.

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‘Mum is supposed to go and apply herself. But this is not possible. First of all, how can she apply? She doesn’t have a computer. She has a phone but is running out of data. She doesn’t have all the documents. She doesn’t speak the language.’

Mrs Greentree said that her mother - who has been sheltering in a make-shift bomb shelter since Thursday - is now preparing to brave a journey across the city today to take a dawn train away from Kharkiv to Lviv, close to the western border of Poland tomorrow.

In the meantime, Mrs Greentree will be funding her own flight from Bournemouth to Poland, before then renting a car and traveling to the border to meet her mother.

She hopes to be in Poland in the next few days.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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