Americans from coast to coast are rallying behind the people of Ukraine.
Demonstrations were held from Seattle to New York and in North Texas.
Friday, dozens attended a pro-Ukrainian rally in a parking lot on Parker Road at U.S. 75 in Plano.
Many have personal connections to the country.
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“I'm devastated,” Natalie Berezovska said, tearfully.
Berezoysha is a native of Ukraine now living in North Texas. She said her family and friends still live in her homeland.
“We're going to carry this trauma for generations but right now, we really need world support, really. The world must do more.,” Berezoysha said.
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She joins a growing chorus of people saying sanctions aren’t enough to get Russian troops off Ukrainian soil.
“The only way to stop a tyrant is with military. They don’t stop otherwise, right?” asked Yevgen Barsukov, a Ukraine native who lives in North Texas.
Barshukov attended Friday’s rally with his father, Pavlo, who made it on one of the last flights out of Kyiv before the Russian invasion.
Translating for his father, Barshukov said, “His only one regret right now is that he's not right now in Kyiv right now, they're giving people machine guns and go and fight. He wants to be there to help with the machine guns and go and fight.”
Flying Ukrainian flags and displaying signs of support that read “stop the war” and “Putin get out of Ukraine,” the rally, organized by the Ukrainian Cultural Club of Dallas, caravanned from Plano to downtown Dallas then to Fort Worth.
“The objective here is to cover as much land as we can. There is not necessarily a lot of government officials here that we can reach directly but we can reach the American public,” said Nataliya Shtanyuk, president of the Ukrainian Cultural Club of Dallas.
