Though Yuliia Obrusnyk and Valerie Chaykovska call Dallas home, both women have lived the last several days on Ukrainian time.
“I don’t go to sleep until I know it’s morning there when things tend to quiet down,” said Chaykovska.
Chaykovska’s grandmother, aunt, cousin and her cousin’s children are all in Mariupol where she was born. It’s been at least two days since she last heard from them.
“The situation there right now is critical. They’ve cut off communication. They have no water, no heating, no power. Therefore, people are not able to charge their cellphones and we can’t reach them. It’s just been really scary and frustrating,” she said.
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In Kharkiv, a city Obrusnyk called home for about 10 years, friends are still answering their phones. Still, as bombs continue to fall, it grows more and more unrecognizable from the place she remembers.
“It’s just every day I’m in contact with my friends before to go to sleep, I’m texting not how are you, but are you alive?” said Obrusnyk.
Both women still have a parent in Ukraine with Obrusnyk’s mom in her hometown of Sumy and Chaykovska’s father, stepmom and baby sister in Odesa.
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At the moment, all are safe.
But as sirens continue to sound in several parts of the country, the women say loved ones tell them they run to bomb shelters multiple times a day.
They say those who can have fled.
“I reached out to Valerie and said, we have to do something,” said Obrusnyk.
"We feel helpless and angry, and we want to help. We want to do what we can,” said Chaykovska.
Over the next two days in Highland Park, the women will hold an essentials drive to build on the efforts of north Dallas boutique Ukie Style to collect humanitarian supplies to be shipped to Poland and driven into Ukraine.
“This is something that keeps us all together, right? We will help each other. And it doesn’t matter, are you Ukrainian, are you Russia, are you from any part of the world. We are all people. We are all humans,” said Obrusnyk.
The women will be collecting non-perishable food, new clothing and shoes, hygiene products, diapers and formula, new bedding, disposable tableware, first aid supplies, lamps, candles, containers for liquid and protective military gear.
Donations can be dropped off at 3825 Gillon Avenue from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday, March 4 and Saturday, March 5.
Volunteers, which Chaykovska said they could use more of, will then drive the supplies to New Jersey where Meest will collect them and transport them to Lviv.
