"I fear the worst": The tears, anger and defiance of Ukrainian families in Greater Manchester who woke up to war

Huddled around a table just outside Bolton town centre, three men nervously wait for news from Ukraine.

They haven’t heard from family members living in the country since it woke to war this morning.

Glancing down at their phones, they anxiously stand by for updates confirming their relatives are safe.

But their desperate calls and messages go unanswered.

“I tried to contact my cousin this morning but she’s offline so I don’t know what’s going on,” Yaroslaw Tymchyshyn, chairman of the Bolton branch of the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain said.

“I fear for the worst. I just don’t know what’s going to happen.

“She’s in an isolated village on the border. We hear bombs are going off in Western Ukraine.

“It makes me feel apprehensive.

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“Even though it’s a remote village, we don’t know what’s going on.

“I’m lucky it’s half term, I wouldn’t know what I’d be like if I was at work.

“When I woke up first thing this morning and they started the reports, it was horror, shock and anger.

“It’s grim.”

Explosions were heard in the capital of Kyiv and other major cities this morning after Vladimir Putin’s announced a military operation had begun.

The Russian president confirmed the action during a televised address, saying the move was a response to threats from Ukraine.

He warned other countries that any attempt to interfere with the Russian action would lead to “consequences they have never seen”.

Yaroslaw, whose parents were born in Ukraine and moved to Greater Manchester in 1947, said he was “distraught” when he woke to news of the military assault.

“Many, many years