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52 Phonebox Magazine | January 2026OLNEY UKRAINE AID NEWSRemembering grandmotherOlney-based artist and Ukrainian heritage promoter Katya Belaia-Selzer writes:Readers might remember me writing a while ago about my Ukrainian grandmother, Galina, whom I was very close to. She was my best friend. We had not been able to see each other since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. I had wanted to see her so much but knew it would be too dangerous for me to travel to Dnipro (East Ukraine) and leave my baby behind. Nicholas was fi ve months old at the time of the invasion. My grandmother was much too frail to make the arduous journey out of Ukraine.Last Easter she passed away. I have not been able to write about this until now because it felt too painful. She died on Easter Sunday, in her own home and her own bed. There was no suff ering. Her dementia meant she didn%u2019t know about the war and the daily explosions happening all around her. On the morning of Easter Sunday my husband and I walked past the Olney Baptist church, where there was the most joyful singing in the courtyard. This compelled me to go in, and I stood there rejoicing in the celebration of life over death. When we returned home, my mum came and told me the devastating news. I have never sobbed so much. She grew up and lived through the Soviet Union, where religion was forbidden and persecuted. Right after the fall of the USSR, a group of American Baptist missionaries came to our home town in Ukraine. For years they would stay in my grandmother%u2019s fl at while on mission. They would baptise local people in the bathtub until they set up their church, which is now fl ourishing. They baptised my grandmother. After she died, my mum put the fl at up for rent. Lots of people came to see it, but they all wanted an empty interior. My mum had deliberately kept the fl at as my grandmother left it, full of fond items and memories, books and paintings, hoping that the right person would one day turn up. After exactly 40 days she had a phone call that the new Baptist minister was looking for accommodation. He came to see the fl at and thought it was perfect and said that it felt just like home. This was very meaningful. God does move in a mysterious way. In October I had another baby boy. We named him Victor %u2013 a name my grandmother would have loved. I think of her every single day and feel she is never too far away but is watching over us all and rejoicing in life.Police bikes to LvivThe region%u2019s police force has now donated 10 unwanted vehicles to Ukraine. Thames Valley Police recently sent two retired police motorbikes and a car to Lviv through the Pick Ups for Peace (P4P) initiative.The vehicles were delivered by Inspector Gavin Biggs and Sergeant James Mathews riding the motorcycles across Europe while Detective Chief Inspector Mike Bettington and a colleague from the National Crime Agency (NCA) drove a Range Rover.The force has supported P4P over the last three years, and nationally the initiative has donated more than 750 vehicles to Ukraine to transport personnel and equipment around the country.The scheme identifi es suitable vehicles with no legal owner and minimal fi nancial value to the force, but represents great value to the Ukrainian military eff orts.