Roman Blyzniuk says he has been thinking a lot about his parents in Ukraine since Russia invaded his native country last week.

“It’s been difficult to keep myself together the last couple of days,” said Blyzniuk, who works at the University of Maine at Augusta.

Blyzniuk said his parents live in a region that is “not strategically important” and are “OK for now.”

His father served in the military in the former Soviet Union and has reenlisted in case Russian forces ramp up where he lives.

Blyzniuk said his father is “shocked to see people he served with are now destroying Ukraine.”

In Chelsea, Nina Charczenko said she is distraught thinking about Ukraine. While most of Charczenko’s family is in Maine and she has lived in Chelsea her entire life, she feels the pain and hurt of the tension within her family’s homeland, more than 4,500 miles away.

“People don’t understand,” Charczenko said in an interview. “(Russian soldiers) are going into a sovereign country and trying to take it over. It can happen to any of us. I wake up crying every day.”

Blyzniuk and Charczenko are among Mainers who have direct ties to Ukraine and are dealing with the stress and fear of an escalating war that threatens to embroil Europe.

Blyzniuk, a learning technology development and support specialist at UMA, said he came to Maine in 2013 from Ukraine, where he was born and raised. He enrolled at Kennebec Valley Community College, where he earned two information technology degrees, and then enrolled in the cybersecurity program at UMA, earning a bachelor’s degree.

An internship opportunity opened up for him in the instructional services unit, which later led to a full-time position working with the Learning Management System.

Charczenko said her parents were teenagers when they and their families came to the United States. Charczenko’s family in Ukraine now includes cousins she has tried to contact through Facebook.

To her knowledge, those she knows in Ukraine are safe, but the situation in the country is changing quickly.

Over the weekend, the United Nations pleaded for a peace treaty, but Russia is not budging — even as the United States and other nations impose potentially crippling economic sanctions on Russia.

A round of peace talks Monday between Ukrainian and Russian officials ended without agreement, except to talk again later, as the war raged on and the Russian military intensified its invasion.

Charczenko lays blame for the war squarely on Russian President Vladimir Putin, who she said has shown “a sick mind” and is “a war criminal” who should be brought to justice.

Blyzniuk pointed to how Putin has gotten involved in American and the United Kingdom’s politics to emphasize how he rules.

“There are still a lot of people there who believe that Ukraine is a threat and the war is justified,” Blyzniuk said.

Putin in the past has divided Ukrainians, Blyzniuk said, but over the past week, he has made Ukraine more united than ever. Still, Blyzniuk said he worries the invasion and war will create a wider divide between Ukraine and Russia.

On Monday, Charczenko was making borscht, a Ukrainian recipe she learned from her “Baba” that she says is “so good it will knock your socks off.”

She was pleased to hear about continuing global support for Ukraine, and urged people to donate to relief efforts in support of Ukrainians.

Blyzniuk, however, said he worries that if economic sanctions and other measures against Russia do not deter the fighting soon, Ukraine “as we know it might not exist.”

« Previous

Waterville council to consider several rezoning requests

Next »

Maine businesses boycott vodka brands, including some non-Russian ones