Ukrainian versus British culture argument (Kyiv)

Hi

I am looking for a bit of guidance from Ukrainian members, I have very recently had a huge argument with some good close Ukrainian friends.

It started because of the following and I'm interested in opinions and thoughts from people.

My friends have an 11 year old daughter, they decided to go out for a meal with a friend to a restaurant 6km from their apartment.

They left their 11 year old daughter home alone, no friends or family live within 20km of the apartment, my friends don't get along with their neighbours as they are always drunk and noisey.

They went out at 18:40 and returned home 22:45. We got into a argument and I said it was totally unacceptable to leave an 11 year old girl alone in an apartment for more than 20 minutes.

I said no matter how grown up their daughter is ( who I have known for 5 years) she is still a child, she thinks like a child, I said she should not be put into a situation where she could potentially Be at risk, be it from something she could do like trip or spill boiling water on herself making a drink, too situations out other control with hundreds of others living the same building. There could be a fire or some kind of disturbance that may scare her.

They went crazy and told me I'm an idiot and have no ideas ( I actually have a14 year old daughter) they said that in Ukraine and Ukrainian culture that it is totally acceptable to go out and leave an 11 year old home alone for such length of time.

They said she has a mobile phone so everything is ok, I told them what happens if something happened where she can't make a call, even though they are only 6km away it could be 6km too late if something terrible happened.

Now I'm just interested to know, have I got this totally wrong and are the cultures in Ukraine and UK so different that it is perfectly ok to leave child alone at night?

I want to understand that if I have misjudged the cultural differences, then I need to clear things with my friends. But if as I suspect it's not totally acceptable by most Ukrainian parents to leave their 11 year old child alone, the I just want to know I'm justified in my words

Many thanks for reading