She has just joined our company as senior business development manager. Her name is Lidia Vynogradna and she has come, effectively, from another world. That is, from Kyiv.

Less than three months ago Lidia, a former top-level rhythmic gymnast and International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) judge who officiated at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, had a senior job in the airport duty free sector and lived in the Ukraine capital with her husband, five-year-old daughter and mother.

The Russian invasion changed everything.

"We stayed in Kyiv for 40 days after the invasion began," she said. "My daughter became very stressed because she had to spend that time basically in one room. My mum, my daughter and I were sleeping all together in one room of my neighbour's because they had an underground garage and we could go there when there were Russian airstrikes.

"So we didn’t sleep in our home. When we got out of Ukraine it was the first time I wore pyjamas in 40 days because we were just asleep in tracksuits!

"When you go out in the streets and you hear all the explosions it's very - I mean nobody can understand it until you are inside it.

"You don’t know what and where explodes because at one point it was forbidden by the Government to speak about any exact locations. Nobody would ever post a photo.

"After a month you stop being scared. Because it’s just continuous days and nights."

The decision to take up the offer of her insidethegames job, for which she had enquired after seeing it advertised on the site, was taken after consultation with her husband, who remains in Kyiv in keeping with the Ukrainian rules.

"He said: 'It’s good that you will be in a safe place so I will have less people to worry about.' So he is happy that we are here," Lidia explains.

She drove initially to Budapest with her daughter, mother and a friend. While there her daughter had a panic attack. After leaving her car with friends in the Hungarian capital Lidia and her fellow travellers caught a flight to Paris before waiting for several weeks for the necessary clearance to come to Britain as part of the Homes for Ukraine scheme.

"That was the trip," she says calmly. "It took us a bit less than four weeks.

"Inside Kyiv we felt safe because it is well protected but we felt that you may get a missile strike on your house at any moment, or you might be driving and the missile just strikes your car and then you die.

"But it’s way better than what is happening in eastern Ukraine or in the northern part of Kyiv.

"Because I live in the southern part of Kyiv and the northern suburbs are where all the hostilities took place. My father's village was mostly destroyed, although his house remained largely intact, just without windows. He had just his clothes stolen.

"His village is close to Bucha and it’s one of the most devastated smaller villages. Around 80 per cent of the houses are in ruins. My husband went there when it was allowed 10 days ago. He said it was crazy when you drive through and see all the devastation there.

"So for us to leave it was not a problem. We took some extra petrol with us so we could put it into the car on the road. And that was all of our concern. Because any second it could happen with you - a missile. 

"But more or less the route we were taking was safe.

"We started on Tuesday morning and we were in Budapest on Wednesday evening."

Despite all these circumstances, Lidia's concern has been not just for her own family. In recent weeks she has set up a Google map and collated onto it offers of help from all around the world to Ukraine’s beleaguered "gymnastics community". So far more than 100,000 people have viewed it.

"It’s a problem that you don’t see your future," she reflects. "When I was back home I just couldn’t understand what our future could be about. And that’s why I was thinking how I could support people, especially women and children.

"Because in Ukraine gymnastics is the most popular sport for girls, more than 20,000 Ukrainian girls are practising rhythmic gymnastics. Artistic gymnastics is not as popular, unlike in the UK.

"So I understand that if a mother is going out of the war zone with her daughter, she just needs to have a goal where she can go. Because you are in Poland or Hungary and you just don't know what to do next.

"That is why I have set up a map because I am quite known in the gymnastics community and all the people would start writing me messages on Facebook from this club in Spain or that Federation in Switzerland saying: 'We are ready to host Ukrainian gymnasts'.

"They put down what they could offer. Some could offer only training. Others could offer accommodation within their community, or meals, or help with work because a lot of coaches who were leaving Ukraine also needed a job to do. They could help in other countries and earn some money.

"So they would post on this form and then I would transfer these to the map. It is like a world map with keys of different colours depending on the gymnastics. Now it’s over 1,200 clubs all over the world that have subscribed and are ready to offer help. So from Costa Rica to the US, Australia, Great Britain, India.

"And a lot of families write me that they have found a safe place to stay, thanks to the map that I have created. So the gymnastics community stays very united to help Ukrainians and we are very grateful to them.

"Because children are the future of the country."

It was reported on April 5 that one of Ukraine’s most talented young rhythmic gymnasts, 10-year-old Kateryna Dyachenko, had been killed by a Russian shell that destroyed her house in Mariupol - confirmed by her coach, Anastasia Meshchanenkova in a post on Instagram.

The Ukrainian Gymnastics Federation said it remained deeply concerned about others in the gymnastics community across Ukraine. A spokesperson commented: "We still have athletes, coaches and judges in other cities occupied by the Russians, in the Chernihiv, Kherson and Kyiv regions."

Lidia adds: "We were really very scared that some coaches were reporting to us that they did not know what was happening with the children going to their clubs.

"Or we did not know what was happening with some girls being trapped in occupation by Russian troops. And that was very bad because in some villages Russian troops are there and our troops were trying to keep them out and you may just die because you are in the wrong place at the wrong moment.

"We know about one gymnast that died in Mariupol. The problem is there are a lot of people still trapped in this city, and there are also some gymnasts who we don’t have a connection with, and their coaches don’t have connection with them, and we don’t know if they are safe."

She references reports of Mariupol citizens being moved to Russia after being deprived of papers and phones.

"People may just disappear and we don’t know what happens to them," she says. "There are a lot of horrible stories in relation to this and we are very concerned about the well-being of children, because rhythmic gymnastics is a sport for minors - it is massive up to the age of 12, less so to age of 16, and then between 16 to 20 you have perhaps five per cent of all the community.

"So we are very concerned about this and not sure how many children from the rhythmic gymnastics community are actually safe.

"We have two coaches from Mariupol who stay close to the city. We do fundraising for them. They could easily leave and they could do well outside Ukraine - I said I could find them a job. But they said, ‘No, we’ll stay because of the children.' Because they consider that the gymnasts who come to them are like their own children."

Last summer Lidia was embroiled in a row at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics over the judging for the women’s individual all-around event, where the Russian Olympic Committee failed to earn gold - the nation's first disappointment since 1996 - as Dina Averina finished second to Israel’s debutante Linoy Ashram.

Lidia was one of the judges who received hate mail and death threats after Russian officials had criticised the result, and lodged a complaint with the FIG.

“I received a huge lot of death threats and very strange messages. I was screenshotting and I have a selection in my Instagram called 'Tokyo Hate'!" she recalls. "It’s funny in a way because three weeks ago the FIG Ethics Commission said they had hired an independent investigator to look into the case.

"I said, ‘You know guys, it is eight months later and now we have completely different fears in our life. And if you want to help, the money you want to spend to hire an investigator you can donate to the Ukrainian Gymnastics Federation. That would be a much better use of money than investigating a case which is no longer relevant to me.'"

Through insidethegames, and with assistance from Ben Everitt, Conservative Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North, Lidia, her daughter and mother are now settled in a house near the office owned by a retired couple.

"I could never imagine that I would receive so much help from complete strangers that would be offering all possible support to me so this is really invaluable," she says. "To understand that there are people out there who care about you even if they don’t know you very well.

"Our hosts have some free rooms because their kids have already grown up and they offered us these two bedrooms between my mum, my daughter and myself. We also have a separate bathroom and a small lounge and it’s more than we could have expected.

"My daughter is going to school on Tuesday. I am in the office since Monday - it’s been a busy week, but everything is good.

"But it's very challenging because my husband is in Ukraine so it is difficult to have a happy life knowing that he is in danger and that we don’t know what happens with our country. So that is also a bit of a mental challenge.

"You act normal here, but as I have been to this war zone I know what it looks like there. It seems kind of strange that you live normally but close friends cannot have that normal life at this moment. So this is difficult."