‘I feel hopeless:’ Local women worry about family in Ukraine as war lengthens

Until a few days ago Lana Cook hadn’t heard from her older sister in Ukraine in weeks.

Before the silence began, Cook’s sister sent her videos of fire and smoke going into the sky. She told her about the Russian soldiers walking around her city with guns and looting stores. She told her about how she can’t get medication to treat her heart problems because all of the stores are closed.

Her sister lives in a city occupied by Russians, alone in her house, and living solely on canned goods.

For Cook, the most agonizing part is knowing that she can’t help — all she can do is pray to God that her sister is alive.

“She is completely isolated from the world,” said Cook, who moved to Wichita 24 years ago from her home city of Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine. “I feel hopeless knowing that I can’t help. I cannot reach out to her. I cannot physically go and get her out because it’s occupied by the Russian military. Nobody can leave their town there. No one.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has left Cook and other Wichita-area women with Ukrainian roots grappling with the unknown and fearing for their families back home.

According to the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, 4,569 Ukrainian civilians have been killed and 5,691 injured in the invasion as of June 20.

Separated by an ocean and miles away, Cook prays that her family will not be a part of the statistics.

Four months into the invasion, experts such as Dr. Andrew Orr, an associate professor at Kansas State University who specializes in modern European warfare, say that there is no clear end in sight. Orr says there is no indication that Russia is going to withdraw, or that President Vladimir Putin, who has justified Russia’s aggression by saying that his goal is to “denazify” Ukraine, is going to lose the support of his people because of the invasion.

“Right now, Putin seems pretty secure in power,” Orr said. “There have been severe setbacks, severe costs and thus far, it’s not clear that there’s space within the regime for an opposition force that could overthrow him. Russia’s security forces appear loyal.”

As the war in Ukraine proceeds and its timeframe lengthens, and as Putin remains in power, these local women haven’t stopped worrying.

“IT DIDN’T GET BETTER AT ALL”

Cook, who runs a firewood business with her husband and has a photography business in Wichita, first saw signs of war eight years ago, in 2014, the same year Russia invaded and annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea. That year, Cook visited Kyiv, Ukraine, despite her family’s requests not to. While there, she saw memorials for people, bullets in buildings, piled up tires and more.

She hoped that would be the worst of it. Since then, she realized that she was wrong.

“They [Russia] have attacked Ukraine,” Cook said. “People who wanted to live a peaceful life who never attacked anyone in the history of their existence just wanted to have peace. They have been attacked and are brutally being murdered. . . . It escalates and it didn’t get better at all.”

Separated from her husband and cut off from medications after three back surgeries, Cook’s sister is alone. Cook wants to bring her to the United States, where knows she will be safe. But because Russian territory is occupied, she can’t.

“SURVIVOR’S GUILT”

Viktoriya ‘Vita’ Douglas, who lived in Newton for 15 years before she started traveling and living in an RV, is from Kharkiv. The second largest city in Ukraine by population, Kharkiv is also where Amnesty International conducted an extensive investigation that found Russia used cluster bombs, which are internationally banned, on populated residential areas. In the organization’s report, A Ukrainian women said that in Kharkiv, “anyone can die at any time.”

Douglas’ mother and brother, who has blood cancer and cannot fight in the war, fled Kharkiv when bombs started hitting the city. However, Douglas has since heard from others in her hometown that several houses close to her old home were bombed and destroyed.

The war is all that’s on Douglas’ mind. And being so far away from her family only adds to the pain.

Her mother and brother fled to western Ukraine, where they are safe. However, Douglas worries for the people in her country, and for her family’s safety as they continue to live in the country that has turned into a war zone.

“I think it might be even worse from some kind of point overseas because it’s like survivor’s guilt,” Douglas said. “You’re eating and you think, ‘Well there are some people that can’t eat now.’ I’m going to sleep in a warm, safe home, and I’m thinking that there are people that are not.”

The feeling is similar to a family member “being very, very sick and you can’t do anything because you’re across the ocean,” Douglas said. “It’s the same feeling, but I understand that if I come there it probably won’t help anything.” Instead, she is trying to help by sending money.

Douglas recently had a conversation about the war with her 10-year-old daughter, who had decided to write a story comparing her life to her Ukrainian friend’s. Douglas helped her daughter with the assignment and attached audio of bombings and pictures of Kharkiv before and after the war.

“After that, she was like, ‘Mom, I think I am traumatized for the rest of my life,’” Douglas said. “And I said, ‘And you’re traumatized living here? Imagine how it is for the kids back there.’”

“LIFE HAS SPLIT INTO BEFORE AND AFTER”

Before the war began, Douglas’ mom told her that she heard the sound of tanks. She lived through World War II and knew the sound.

“Mom’s like, ‘I can hear them at night. They go off at night. You can’t confuse them with anything,’” Douglas recalls her saying.

It was when that Douglas’ friend Elena Loflin, who is originally from Ekaterinburg, Russia, but now lives in Wichita, called her on Feb. 24 to tell her Kharkiv was being bombed that Douglas found out her mom had been was right all along.

Although Loflin is from Russia, she speaks up against the actions of that government.

“I am against this war. I am completely on Ukraine’s side,” Loflin said in her native language of Russian, while pointing to her ballcap with the words “Peace, love, Ukraine” stitched onto it.

From sending money to Ukraine to organizing and participating in events to bring awareness to the war in Wichita, Loflin said she is doing everything she can to help. Loflin, along with Cook, Douglas and other women all helped organize a fundraiser for Ukraine at the Spring 2022 Women’s Fair at Century II.

Loflin, who works at Dillon’s and brought her son to the United States when she moved here to get married, has a few relatives in Ukraine. When the attack began, her cousin, who lived in Odessa, the fourth largest city in Ukraine, fled to Europe, where she received refugee status. Loflin, however, said she worries for her other family members in Ukraine.

“In general, this war, when this happened, I was in complete shock,” Loflin said. “Everything is so tight and interconnected historically between our two people. The fact that Russia started a war so brutal… life has split into before and after and still, in the background, you are living, you are doing something, and war is happening. War is happening.”

Loflin said that the war has created divide and conflict between individuals from Russia and Ukraine. Many of her friends and people she knows support the war.

Douglas said she is “just amazed at how easily people are manipulated, how easily they believe what they want to believe even though there’s plenty of information around proving otherwise.”

The Washington Post reported in March that 58% of Russians support the invasion of Ukraine. Loflin said such a number does not surprise her. She says that she does not bring up war with people who she knows support it.

“Oh my goodness, they can’t even plainly explain what they’re fighting for,” Loflin said.

One example is the false claim that the Russian language is not allowed in Ukraine. Loflin said that she visited her family in Odessa for a wedding last September and spoke Russian.

Propaganda and misinformation in Russian media, which is largely government-controlled, have convinced many Russians to support the war and Russian aggression, Orr, the K-State professor, said.

The government “fed them information about nonexistent Ukrainian atrocities against Russians,” Orr said. “They fed them now for 15 years a steady diet of disinformation claiming that Ukrainians don’t have a real culture, that it’s not a real country, that it’s a part of Russia under foreign control.

“That resonates because people have heard it for so long. For a lot of younger Russians, that means the entire time they’ve paid attention to politics.”

“I WANT THEM TO FEEL WHAT WE FEEL”

As Ukrainians, Douglas and Cook say they want Russians to be punished for their acts against the Ukrainian people.

“It might sound horrible, but I want them to feel what we feel,” Douglas said. “When our buildings are being bombed, that’s all I want. When all you hear about children dying and losing limbs.

“Buildings I’m not so sad about, but people — families, young boys being thrown in there, young kids that didn’t have to leave.”

Douglas says that’s all she thinks about, and she hopes that it comes back to Russia.

Faith in God keeps Cook going. But her ultimate wish is for it all to stop.

“I am with the Ukrainian people, hoping for peace — that this war will stop,” Cook said. “And that Ukraine will live a peaceful life without anybody trying to take over my native land and nobody would be hurt or crying, or killed, or tortured in front of their family, brutally killed and thrown in a massive grave like a piece of meat.”

This story was originally published June 21, 2022 at 4:18 AM.