Fife and Tayside MPs spend night in bomb shelter during visit to war-torn Ukraine

Two Tayside and Fife MPs saw first-hand the hell Ukraine is enduring in a visit to Kyiv three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The SNP’s Stephen Gethins and Labour’s Graeme Downie spent the night in a bomb shelter while staying in the war-torn country’s capital city.

But the two Westminster MPs say their ordeal was just an “inconvenience” compared with the nightmare Ukrainians are living every day.

“For the people who live with this every single day, it must have a huge effect on their lives and how they are able to cope,” said Mr Downie, who represents Dunfermline and Dollar.

“This is not how they should have to be living their lives.”

Mr Gethins, MP for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry, was walking in the evening when the air raid sirens started to go off.

He said it sounded like “something you’d hear out the Blitz”.

“We had a couple of bad nights’ sleep, but we were well looked after, and the defences were solid,” he told The Courier.

Mr Gethins, an international relations expert who worked at St Andrews University, has spent plenty of time in Ukraine and neighbouring countries.

“If you go to the east, where this is happening constantly, you see the shelled out homes, the families who have been displaced,” he said

The two MPs helped deliver aid during their visit and spoke to local charities helping those affected by the war.

They spoke to Angus farmer Mark Laird, co-founder of charity Pick Ups for Peace.

One woman said her relative had been saved by one of Mark’s trucks used to help Ukrainians on the frontline.

Mr Gethins and Dr Downie have plenty of refugees living in their constituencies.

The MPs said Ukrainians in Tayside and Fife are “worried” about the war’s trajectory.

US President Donald Trump wants the conflict to end immediately and has branded Ukraine’s elected leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator”.

“Fundamentally they want to go home,” Mr Gethins said.

“But given Trump’s comments and given Vladimir Putin’s continued aggression, they’re worried about what that means for them and the safety of their kids.”