Brighton man living in Kyiv tell us "my heart is here" as war rages on
Dan Baker moved to Ukraine in 2017 with his wife and daughter
Last updated 2nd Mar 2022
A man from Brighton now living in Ukraine tells us he won't be bullied out of his home by invading Russian forces.
Dan Baker moved to Kyiv in 2017 with his Ukrainian wife and daughter and spent the weekend holed up in a basement in the city while a curfew was imposed.
Speaking to Greatest Hits Radio, he said: "There's warning signs if you look back hard enough. With hindsight, there's always warning signs, right? In October 2020, we came home from holiday in Turkey and I think that's when troops were being lined up along the border and we had martial law for sometime and then it calmed down. Maybe the outbreak of Covid kind of slowed this down, it might have happened earlier.
"If Russia lose this war, they lose a war. If Ukraine lose this war, they lose their country and their culture"
Dan has taken to documenting his experiences on YouTube, releasing multiple vlogs daily detailing his family's lives during the conflict.
With a huge Russian military convoy approaching Dan's home city of Kyiv, we asked him if he had any plans to evacuate.
He said: "No, not at all. This is my home. I have a flat, a car, and a cat. I'm not gonna be bullied, I'm not gonna be pushed out of my home. If I turned it back on you and said if this was happening in England, would you be pushed out of your home?
"Heroes have been defending my city for two or three days now. They Russian soldiers haven't really advanced as much as they should have. We’ll be talking about a whole new ball game if the sky is controlled and the sea is controlled, we will beat them on land. I have no doubt about that.
"My heart is here, this is why I'm staying. It’s a solidarity between a culture which has assimilated me into their ways, you know, and they’re such courageous and brave people."