Hundreds demonstrate support for Ukraine on the second anniversary of Russian invasion

“It’s terrible because my children miss their father and my daughter wants to go back to Ukraine, and I’m scared. I don’t know what we’ll do with our life, but I hope in the future one day it stops and we can come back to our normal lives,” Kramarenko said.

“I just remembered on February 25, my husband called to me and said, ‘you must immediately go to West Ukraine because it’s more safe. We just wake up, you know, and all our simple lives are just gone. I’m a lawyer, I have a job, I have my simple life, I have two children,” she continued.

Kramarenko’s husband and her grandmother remain in Ukraine, and Kramarenko said when she phones her grandmother she can sometimes hear bombs. The danger and fear that many Ukrainians live with has tragically become a regular occurence, and Kramarenko worries for her family’s safety as the Russian invasion continues.

“I feel sorry about her because at her age she just wants to pass away in peace, and it’s terrible. I’m 32 years old and I can restart my life, but what about those that can’t restart their lives?”

Oleksii Miroshnyk and his family also had to flee to Prince George once the war began, and he initially learned the war began not through the news or an announcement, but fighter jets.

“We were just woken up by some of the military jets because we had an open window in our house. So we were scared, just didn’t know what to do. We gathered our papers, and we realized that the war started,” Miroshnyk said.

“We didn’t believe that it may happen until it happened, actually. And it was super, super stressful. We didn’t have a lot of experience like traveling and so on and we had to change everything. We had one habit of life and we had to build new habits of life to get used to living in a different country,” he added.

Having to change your entire life and move to an unfamiliar country at a moment’s notice is a challenge most people will never understand, and while it certainly isn’t easy to change your entire life just like that, both Kramarenko and Miroshnyk say the community around them has made the challenge easier.

“Canada is very, very, very friendly, very hospitable, very good people, specifically in Prince George. We are very grateful, myself, my wife and my family, very grateful to Prince George’s community,” Miroshnyk said.

“I found so many kind people and all time people try to help you, saying ‘it’s not a problem.’ It’s a different culture and there’s a lot of things I don’t know about, people try to help you and try to support you and it’s amazing,” Kramarenko said.

The challenges don’t end with just living in Canada though, as community volunteer Charles Scott explained other issues, such as work permits ending, dependance on extended supports becoming harder to facilitate, mental health challenges, and many more are looming. However, showing support and helping out where you can, even if it’s as simple as attending a pro-Ukraine demonstration, can make taking these challenges on a bit easier for the Ukrainians in our community.

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by Tommy Osborne

Hundreds demonstrate support for Ukraine on the second anniversary of Russian invasion

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