Rodyna: In troubled times, the shop providing Ukrainians and Russians with help and a taste of home

As you walk through its small grey door and catch your first glimpse of its shelves stacked with everyday essentials, it looks almost identical to the thousands of other convenience stores across our city.

Yet, set back on the bustling Cheetham Hill Road next to a tyre garage, Rodyna is no ordinary shop.

It is an institution that has been an integral part of Greater Manchester's Ukrainian, Russian and Eastern European communities for approaching two decades.

And as the brutal invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin's forces unfolds, the shop's Ukrainian owner says it will do anything it can to help its customers - proudly continuing its mission to give them a taste of home during this darkest of hours.

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

Rodyna was founded by Oksana Oliinyk, 52, and her husband Volodymyr, 55, 18 years ago.

Oksana, who now lives in Chadderton, Oldham, and hails from the city of Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine, came to the UK in 1995, shortly after her country gained its independence from its neighbour.

"We had a very difficult situation by then in Ukraine, because after we became independent everything was just building up and we had to look for a better life, to be honest with you," she said.

"I had a great-grandfather here who was a second world war prisoner here who had lived here since 1947.

"So we came and settled here. We lived in London for six and a half years but then we moved to Manchester as we had friends here but we were also thinking of setting up a business.

"That's when it first came to us to set up a business which can give people a little bit of a taste of their homeland."

The shop, which