BOW VALLEY – There are nights when Maria Nazarenko and Ania Vozna aren’t sure if their family and friends in Ukraine are alive or not.
The sporadic ability to connect with loved ones since the Russian invasion has led to sleepless nights wondering if there will be a next conversation with those they know in Ukraine.
“When it started, I thought it was a nightmare. We couldn’t sleep. We were just together, reading the news, hearing of the bombings, artillery shelling. … I’m waiting for my mom to text me ‘I’m alive’. That was my two weeks of hell,” said Nazarenko, who has lived in Canada for the past 11 years.
“I tried not to sleep because I was afraid I would miss if Russians took over my city because they started destroying communication towers. … My mom was scared they would capture our city. Part of me was so scared they’d keep bombing until they destroyed everything and everyone. You just pray your family isn’t killed.”
Nazarenko and her long-time friend Vozna have had to watch the events taking place in Ukraine from the safety of Canmore roughly 8,500 kilometres and nine time zones away.
When they can speak with people in their homeland, it provides a sense of relief, but the unknowing of what is happening and how it is impacting those they know, remains a struggle.
“Every day we don’t know what’s going to happen to our regions. This war, it goes on and people keep dying. They don’t deserve this and I want people to know what’s going on,” Nazarenko said.
For Vozna, who has spent the last two years in Canmore, working in the community in the summers while attending university in the school year, it has been difficult to remain in touch.
With communication lines being a primary military target, the ability to connect with her family has been difficult at the best of times. With calls lasting a few minutes to mere seconds, it’s largely waiting for the next call to hear if they’re safe.
One 40-minute call gave a brief glimpse of hope, but often Vozna has to follow via social media. On one occasion, she learned the area in which her her mom lived had been bombed and had to wait two long hours to learn she was safe.
“I never felt anything like this before because you just don’t know. Two hours later my mom wrote me she was alive. Every day has been the same for every region attacked by Russia,” Vozna said.
“It’s absolutely heartbreaking because they worked their whole lives to be able to afford to move there.”
Vozna said the heat and electricity were knocked out early, leaving her parents living in the basement of their home for safety and using a cast-iron stove for heat. Her parents had planned to leave, but the Russian army entered their village and used it as an artillery location to shell Ukrainian targets.
“Most of the village is now destroyed because if you shoot someone, they shoot you back. They are still able to move around a little bit, but the Russians are there. They come and go,” she said.
While Vozna's family remain in Ukraine, Nazarenko’s mother joined her in Canmore last Friday (March 25) after fleeing the country and making her way through Europe to Canada. She left at the behest and begging of Nazarenko, crossing only with her passport and some money.
“That was the small relief in my life that one person is safe. The rest of my family is still hiding from bombings,” Nazarenko said.
“To leave everything behind is really painful. It’s really hard to start from zero and to think what is going to happen to your land, your house. … It’s very hard to know your mom is being bombed.”
Liza Kanishcheva, who has lived in Canmore for five years and now works at the Juniper Hotel in Banff, grew up in Kharkiv. Her parents, who were originally from Belgorod and Sumy, were in Kharkiv when the war began.
She remembers talking to her parents on Feb. 14 as the chances of an invasion grew each day. It wasn’t until the war began on Feb. 24 and she was at work that the reality of what was happening hit her.
She talked with her family in Belgorod, who were convinced by Russian propaganda that it was Ukrainians attacking Ukrainians and Russia wasn’t involved.
“It was a really difficult situation,” Kanishcheva said. “There’s no way to save Ukraine if Russian people will be on (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s side.”
As the conflict continued, Kanishcheva followed along as the war drew closer to her home. She debated returning to Ukraine to help in any way possible, but after a friend in Vinnytsia in western Ukraine talked her out of it, she looked at other ways to help. After convincing her parents to leave Ukraine, they landed at the Calgary International Airport March 7.
Kanishcheva organized a GoFundMe account to raise money for necessary supplies such as medical equipment, emergency blankets, flashlights and warm clothing.
“They said ‘we don’t need money. We need radios, medical equipment, we can’t do anything with money right now’. … I just need to get the stuff to ship to Ukraine," she said. "The only thing that really kept me going was to organize this charity and not focusing on the news.”
Through a friend of a friend, Kanishcheva organized humanitarian aid through a transport company in Toronto that is shipping it for free, with most of the funds coming from Bow Valley residents.
“It was a blessing. I’m so blessed to be part of this community,” she said. “The Bow Valley has been so supportive and helpful. Seeing this support was really what kept me going. I could not have been able to buy all the humanitarian aid without their support.”
Other groups such as Canmore Food and Friends have done fundraisers, while the Rotary Club of Canmore is working with Rotary International to collect donations to help people fleeing the conflict.
A group will also hold a rally for Ukraine Thursday (March 31) at noon at the Canmore Civic Centre, which includes a walk down Main Street to raise awareness.
Both Vozna and Nazarenko are from Russian-speaking regions in eastern Ukraine – Vozna from the Kharkiv and Nazarenko from Sumy – with both cities immediately being on the frontlines and of strategic importance.
The initial conflict began after the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity, also known as the Maidan Revolution. Russia invaded eastern Ukraine provinces in the Donbas region and annexed Crimea in the Black Sea in 2014.
In recent days, Russia has said it will scale down its military offensive as Ukraine’s army has held firm against the invasion and casualties have mounted in the largely mechanized war. Since its outbreak, upwards of 30,000 people have been killed and up to four million have been displaced, according to the United Nations.
Ukraine has seen some of the most intense conflicts in the 20th and 21st centuries. The country was on the frontlines of the First World War, but the Treaty of Breast-Litovsk, which ended the conflict between Germany and Russia, brought little relief.
The Ukrainian War of Independence, the Russian Civil War, the Soviet-Ukrainian War and the Polish-Ukrainian War saw continuous conflicts in the region.
The Holodomor genocide by the Soviet Union on Ukraine led to millions dying in the 1930s, while the outbreak of the Second World War had Ukraine on the frontline from 1941-44. The German occupation and significant battles in Kyiv, Kharkiv, the Dnieper River and Korsun-Cherkasy had millions live and die in the most brutal battles in military history.
But while Vozna and Nazarenko have had their lives flipped upside down, they realize life continues in the Bow Valley.
“My life changed in one hour. Anything of concern to me, it disappeared,” Nazarenko said. “I had to think about just the existence of everyone I loved. I went to take my dog to the dog park and heard them talking about their daily lives – that doesn’t exist for me anymore. I want to think one day I’ll be worried about intersections like every other person in Canmore, but now none of it matters.
“It doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter for others, but things come into perspective. I hope life will return and I can be upset with everyone else about an intersection. … War is the worst thing and I never thought it’d come into my life. We always lived in peace.”
Vozna and Nazarenko had friends in Ukraine call to comfort them, knowing the difficulty in waiting to know if people they love are safe. The two have also returned to work, while Vozna also continues her research for university.
“People will call to comfort me because they say it’s harder for me. My friend will say ‘we have so much melted snow and I don’t have to do dishes’. Their spirit is strong how they help each other,” Vozna said.
The coming weeks will see if the war will scale down, as reports show the Russian military has had several setbacks and taken significant casualties, or if the war will continue.
For Ukrainians in the Bow Valley, the desire is a return to peace.
“People are hoping it will end and hopefully it will come to be peaceful,” Nazarenko said. “My country deserves that.”
For information on donating to Ukraine, visit the following sites:
- https://linktr.ee/RazomForUkraine
- https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-ukrainians-now-humanitarian-aid
- https://socialsciences.uottawa.ca/news/chair-ukrainian-studies-university-ottawa-resources-support-ukraine
CORRECTION: The original article stated Kanishcheva's father was in Belgorod, Russia and mother in Sumy, Ukraine when the war began. They are from those locations, but lived in Kharkiv when the war and lived there for 30 years. The article has been updated and corrected.
