Ukranians In PNW React To Russian Invasion

Armed only with Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp, Ukrainians living in the Northwest watch  in horror as the Russian invasion of their homeland rages.
Pasha Rudenko is a PH.D. scientist who lives in Pullman. His company makes nano-materials. He’s been watching what’s happening across the world very carefully. He just returned from a family visit to Ukraine about a week ago.

“If we don’t stop Putin now I think the war will be on the European continent for many years,” Rudenko said. 

Sergey Stolyar is also a scientist. He’s with the University of Idaho, but lives with his wife in Seattle. Stolyar says he’s had almost no sleep.

 “Yeah, we could not imagine that it would be this scale with bombarding and shelling like entire Ukraine territory. Practically every town every city, every city every big city in Ukraine,” he said. 

Stolyar says his daughter Anna and her husband and their two children left Ukraine and are now stuck in North Africa.

Other Ukrainians living across Washington and Oregon are getting no sleep as they watch what’s unfolding in their home country. They fret over family and friends and wait for welfare checks on messaging apps. Olga Strand  lives in Richland with her husband and three young children. She says her mother is near Crimea where there’s been heavy bombing.

“So I am thinking to help my mom get out of there,” she said.  But because these missile strikes come and go. And she has no car there. So I hope she will contact me finally because I don’t hear from her for many hours.” 

Strand says she plans to start up a fundraiser to help people near the border with Russia whose homes have been destroyed.