Many miles to go

Olesya gazes out the window near her desk, across the bay to downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia. From the eighth floor of the office where she works, she can see commuters crossing the Macdonald Bridge in the setting sun as an ocean wind roughs the surface of the frigid water. Olesya has been up since 4 a.m. She worked for three hours at an online job before riding a bus 40 minutes to this administrative job. On weekends, she works with her daughter at a church-run thrift store. In rare moments she’s not working, Olesya messages her family, checks on her husband and son, and reads the latest news from Ukraine. And every moment, she wonders about God’s plans for her, her family, and her country.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, more than 8 million Ukrainians have fled their country. Another 6.5 million are displaced within its borders. With parts of the country returned to “relative” calm, many have come home, only to deal with incessant air raid sirens, power cuts, and lack of basic supplies. Others, like Olesya, are still waiting in foreign lands and wondering what’s best, caught between self-preservation and the search for the best way to support their war-torn country and uprooted families.

The day the invasion began, Olesya’s husband Taras woke her to break the news. (WORLD is using first names only to protect Taras’ safety.) He had already fought in the 2014 Crimean war, and he quickly donned his uniform. Within three hours, he’d reported for duty and was gone.

Sure she’d never see him again and stunned by the news on television, Olesya didn’t eat or sleep for two days. She, her son, and her daughter spent four weeks living in the kitchen. With one wall in the hillside and two other walls between the kitchen and the road, it was the best-protected room in the house. An air-defense system on the outskirts of Kyiv fired around the clock, repelling Russian attacks. It was just a few ­kilometers away from their home, and the noise was deafening. The windows shook constantly. Sleep became impossible.

Friends at their Kyiv church had connections with a church in France. When an offer came mid-March to find refuge there for a while, Olesya decided to make a move and join the river of refugees flowing out of the country.

Most of the people leaving Ukraine stopped in Europe. Poland and Germany welcomed the most refugees—1.6 ­million and 1.1 million respectively. Canada welcomed 132,000 Ukrainians in 2022. The United States offered ­asylum to 1,978 Ukrainians through the official refugee asylum system. An estimated 85,000—reports vary—have come since April, an influx that’s part of Uniting for Ukraine, a newer, faster platform that lets individual Americans sponsor Ukrainian citizens.

With her 15-year-old daughter Liza, Olesya took a perilous train ride to Lviv in western Ukraine, then across Poland to the Czech Republic, where a French bus came to meet them at a refugee center. Olesya’s son Ihor, then 17, could have left, too, but chose to stay in Kyiv to support humanitarian efforts at their church. It had become a hub for people internally displaced from the harder-hit eastern regions around Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia.

One month after the invasion, Olesya and Liza arrived in France, with one small roller bag each and the assumption that their stay would last only a couple of weeks. Olesya threw herself into online work as an administrator for a Ukrainian nonprofit, while Liza continued her high school classes online. They appreciated the safety and provision of their host country, but the village where they stayed felt tiny after Kyiv. Plus, they spoke fluent English, not French. Canada, meanwhile, had done away with the lengthy and costly visa process for Ukrainians. Inflating costs in Ukraine meant Olesya’s salary would no longer be enough for life there, much less anywhere else. She started to consider looking for work in Halifax, where she already had a friend, even though it meant moving even ­farther away from her husband and son.

The sojourn Olesya thought would last just a few weeks has now turned into six months in one foreign country and five in another. Other Ukrainian refugees who came to Canada or France have started to settle in. “It’s understandable. Some always wanted to leave, and the war gave them the chance,” Olesya said. “But home is where your family is. They brought their families with them, but my ­husband and son are in Ukraine.”

WHILE PEOPLE HAVE POURED out of Ukraine, aid has poured in from individual governments, vast international organizations, and small nonprofits. The war has left 17.6 million people in the country in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. The day I spoke to Olesya, a convoy left Mulhouse, France, in the wee hours of the morning. Organized by the Partir Offrir association, seven minibuses crammed with food, generators, and hygiene supplies sped east over snowy roads for two straight days. On the morning of the third day, Olesya got a photo message on WhatsApp: It showed volunteer driver Tony Pacheco hand-delivering a care package to Olesya’s son, Ihor. Olesya had sent it with a friend traveling to France, who passed it to Pacheco.

That trip was association president Pascal Graber’s sixth humanitarian mission to Ukraine since February. Coming just after Christmas, Graber didn’t know what French churches would be able to donate, but their ­support for Ukraine remains strong: They sent trucks filled with supplies for Ukrainians suffering through winter without enough food or electricity.

“It’s a drop in the ocean,” Graber said. “But we’ll keep working as long as we need to.” And the danger of traveling within a few kilometers of the front lines? “We think about it, but we stay confident, because otherwise we’d never do anything.”

This trip took Graber the farthest east yet: After delivering supplies in Lutsk and Kyiv, the convoy continued to churches in Kharkiv and Izium, where they found bombed-out cities and lines of people waiting for food. Through an interpreter Graber told them, “From France we think about you, and we don’t forget you, even if what you live is very difficult. We pray for you from France, because we love Ukrainian people.”

That evening, air raid sirens wailed, and the French volunteers got warnings on their phones. What was startling for them has become commonplace for Ukrainians. Some are growing dangerously complacent about finding their way to safety during air raids. But many insist the best way for everyday citizens to fight the Russians is to continue their lives and reject the despair the enemy hopes will crush them.

KRISTY WILLIAMS lives in Lviv. Because that city is less of a target, the alarms haven’t seemed as urgent. Still, many times she’s left groceries on the supermarket belt when the siren blares, the store is locked up, and everyone heads to the basement.

“I’m not saying we’re used to it. I’m saying we adapt,” Williams said. Adaptation means several pairs of long underwear for each family member, barrels to keep water in reserve, extra gas, and camp stoves for cooking when the power goes out. It also means having a nuclear fallout kit.

“How are we all different after a year? I’m not a war expert, but I can tell you how a missile enters a building. Everybody knows what their evacuation plan is. Everybody knows where their documents are,” Williams said. “The further east you go, the more dangerous the situation, the less you know how long you’ll live.”

That urgency is bringing people to the gospel. Williams has a friend who pastors a church near the front line. “Here there are no differences between Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox,” he told her. “It’s just desperate people needing God and needing community. Every week people are getting saved.”

Serving somewhere along that front line is Taras, Olesya’s husband. When he goes on a mission out of cell phone range, he sends a message so she’ll worry just a little bit less. Olesya still gets the air raid alerts on her phone, but without the distraction of immediate tasks like getting to a shelter or starting a generator, the uncertainty is almost harder to bear. So she gets up early with Liza, whose Kyiv classes begin at 3 a.m. in Halifax, and she sends messages to her family. Then she works, she prays, and she waits.