CINCINNATI — Late Thursday night, as explosions revealed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions to invade Ukraine, the Kharchyk family sat glued to their TV thousands of miles away.
They didn’t sleep. Instead, they sat anxiously waiting by their phones to hear from their family hiding from the violence they had hoped for so long would never come.
“For us, it’s like our biggest disaster,” Sergeiy Kharchyk said. “We couldn’t believe it would happen.”
The Kharchyk family moved to the Cincinnati area about 10 years ago and shortly afterwards started a “Ukrainians in Cincinnati” group to build ties among Ukrainians and other eastern Europeans in the area. Now Kharchyk said the family is leaning on the group for support as they wait to learn what will come next.
“We both have parents back in Ukraine,” he said. “I have my brother.”
Kharchyk said his family is primarily in Western Ukraine and has been unharmed by the attacks.
“The problem is they don’t really know what’s going on because they have as much information as we do here,” he said.
His wife’s family, in eastern Ukraine near Kharkiv, reported a more terrifying experience.
“They had to run into the basement because they were able to hear — all this you know, rockets, shelling, bombs, whatever — so they do not feel obviously safe,” he said.
Like many Ukrainians, Kharchyk said he and his wife both have a lot of ties to Russia. Russian was his wife’s first language and they both have friends in Russia or from Russia. That’s why Kharchyk said it’s difficult to understand why anyone from the country would support Putin’s actions.
“We are not enemies of the Russian people,” he said.
Kharchyk strongly believes in a free and independent Ukraine and got emotional when asked what it meant to be Ukrainian.
This moment from my interview with a Ukrainian family in Cincinnati broke my heart. I asked him what it meant to be Ukrainian. “We’re small comparable to Russia, but we’re free.” @SpectrumNews1OH pic.twitter.com/c9YA8XCuKy
— Michelle Alfini (@MichelleAlf) February 24, 2022
“In Ukraine, people are free,” he said. “Comparable to Russia, we’re small, but we’re proud and we’re free.”
Kharchyk and the Ukrainians in Cincinnati group are organizing a rally in support of peace in Ukraine 4 p.m. Friday at Home of the Brave Park in Loveland.
Spectrum News was also able to connect with Ukrainians with ties to Cincinnati who are still in the country. Representatives involved in the Cincinnati-Kharkiv Sister City Partnership spoke of their anxieties about the potential invasion Wednesday afternoon.
On Thursday, they shared updates reporting that they had heard the explosions but they were okay. Some said they were evacuating or planning to evacuate others said they were waiting for more information, before determining their next steps.
