Galyna Savchuk was in fear for her life this time last week.

Alone and in her sixties, she spent her nights cowering in a darkened basements, while air raid sirens blared outside.

Last night she arrived in Edinburgh, one of the very first Ukrainians to arrive in the UK under the government’s visa scheme.

But it hasn’t been any easy journey and without her daughter Mariia Zommers flying to Poland to battle red tape on her behalf, she might never have made it.

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“I believe there are hundreds of mothers on the other side,” Mariia told Sky News, “And I believe there are quite a few Ukrainian girls here in Scotland who would love to bring them here to safety.

“But not everyone has the ability to just go and make that happen.”

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Determined to get her mother out of danger, Mariia flew to Warsaw last week, before the UK visa scheme had even been launched. After 10 hours of queuing at the border, Galyna finally made it into Poland. She had never travelled or left Ukraine on her own before.

But it took the pair another six days to get Galyna’s application processed and approved through an increasingly chaotic and oversubscribed system. Mariia described the scenes she witnessed at visa centres they visited as “like a switch to a different reality”.

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She said: “It’s heartbreaking. These people have nowhere to go, all they want to do is get to their families.

“The whole process is too long, too complicated and no-one really seems to know what is going on.

“My hand was shaking when I filled in the application. I knew I had all the documents but so many others just don’t, because they’re trying to run from war and sometimes you can’t stop and pick up all the right pieces of paper.

“This is not what these people need when they’ve been through so much already. When they’ve left their homes with just little backpacks, leaving their whole lives behind and then they have to worry about whether the visa will be approved or whether they got some tiny thing wrong.

“If I hadn’t been there, I don’t know what would have happened to my mother.”

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Although two of her children have lived in Scotland for a number of years, Galyna has never been able visit them and was turned down for a tourist visa just before Christmas. Speaking to Sky News she said she had never imagined that if would be circumstances like this that would finally bring to her to Edinburgh.

“I always wanted to visit Scotland and just enjoy the time with my kids and grandson – unfortunately now I have had to come over because I am running from the war, but I am happy to be here.

“I am absolutely heartbroken for my country, I am so worried for all my friends I’ve had to leave behind.

“I think about them all of the time. Even though my body is here, my mind and my heart is there with them.”

Her mother is now safe but Mariia still has a half-brother and cousins in Ukraine who she worries for but is unable to help. She thinks the UK government has allowed its stance on immigration to spill over into policies for refugees.

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She said: “I think the UK need to do more to allow people from within a slightly extended family to come over too.

“I know even if my cousin or my friends want to come over, they won’t stay for a long time. They would wait until things get better and then they will go back to Ukraine. Because they belong there, they don’t want to run. They just want to wait until it’s safe.”

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