As the fighting broke out in Ukraine, they fled. They are now celebrating their motherland.

Iryna Shevchuk, 33, is one of 122,000 displaced people housed in the UK under a government program to help some of the millions who fled the Russian invasion of her home country. This week, five months after she arrived, her adopted city of Liverpool is playing host to Ukraine’s biggest celebration since the Russian invasion. The dockside hub where the competition is being held feels like a little Ukraine, and Liverpudlians have draped their home in Ukraine’s national colors, and welcomed scores of displaced people after the British government earmarked 3,000 tickets for Ukrainian refugees. Shevchuk is safe thanks to Amel Menacere, a 36-year-old Liverpudlian she’d never met, who volunteered to house a refugee in her spare room. Shevchuk and Menacere spoke to CNN in the living room of their terraced house, a stone’s throw from Penny Lane – the street immortalized by Liverpool’s most famous sons, The Beatles. Menacere was inspired to host someone after herself fleeing civil war in Algeria in 1993, aged 7. Shevch