Like so many of Manchester's Ukranian community, Stefan Jajecznyk watched in horror as President Vladimir Putin launched his all-out invasion on Thursday.
The 32-year-old journalist from Salford was born in the UK but feels proudly Ukrainian. He flew out to the capital Kyiv to take part in the 2014 revolution and in later years followed a band of volunteers bringing supplies to soldiers who were fighting Russian-backed separatists in the east.
For Stefan and so many others, Putin is not just a war-mongering thug who has to be stopped - he is the latest manifestation of Russian expansionism which has blighted Europe since the Second World War. READ MORE:'How could you do this to our family?': Callous son started devastating blaze that killed mum after argument over booze delivery service Stefan's grandparents, from the village of Hajvoronka in the Ternopil region of west Ukraine, settled here after World War II.
Grandad Mychailo had served in a Ukrainian army unit which fought the Russians and which was co-opted by the Nazis - he and it surrendered to the British, and he ended up making a life for himself here, from 1948, working on farms and in factories.
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