![]() ![]() Rita has found a job in an Amazon distribution centre it is hard, unforgiving work. Today, they live in a bedsit in Świebodzin, a town in western Poland. Two weeks after we arrived there was a fireworks display and he was terrified, traumatised by the noises and explosions They decided they needed a more permanent home and made contact with a family friend in Poland. The Guardian reader helped them settle but the family was ultimately moved from one refugee centre to another, city to city, under a system that favoured distributing refugees around the country. It was days of travelling and life was not easy, even on arrival, as Switzerland struggled to deal with the influx of Ukrainian refugees. Then it was another train to Krakow in Poland, one to Vienna from there and a final train to Geneva. But Rita held his hand and they persevered, travelling to Kharkiv with an army escort, then taking an eight-hour train journey to Kyiv, where they rested in the station before making the 13-hour journey west to Lviv. Photograph: Ed Ram/The GuardianĪs they emerged from the basement, on Sunday 22 May last year, Tymofiy begged to go back down. … and then, living in a bunker in Ukraine. Tanks featured a lot in his art, as did Dalek-like monsters. ![]() For 87 days, Tymofiy, terrified by the barrage of violence above him, drew his pictures under a tiny LED light, in the corner of the otherwise almost completely dark basement. All the other children had been evacuated but Tymofiy’s family had nowhere to go and no money to go there. Once war broke out, home for Tymofiy and 23 others, including his mother, aunt and grandparents, was a dark, cramped bunker under a bomb-damaged kindergarten, in the centre of a village once populated by 1,500 residents, reduced to 50 within months. Then, Tymofiy was the only child left in Kutuzivka, a Ukrainian village on the eastern outskirts of Kharkiv, a major city close to the Russian border and an early target of Vladimir Putin’s invading forces. They are, she says with evident relief, a world away from the art the nine-year-old was producing a year ago. Tymofiy Seidov’s drawings today are “full of vivid characters and vibrant landscapes”, according to his proud mother, Rita. ![]()
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