As Ukrainians fight for survival, local Ukrainians try to make sense of the human and emotional toll.

On Friday, Feb. 25, the second day of Russia’s war in Ukraine, we received this message from Anna Faith, a Ukrainian living in Monterey: “I read my local newspapers and check everyone’s social media that seem to remain unbothered that the world as we know it is falling apart. I know this is a local newspaper, but I am local and my news isn’t in here. I am a Monterey resident deeply affected by the war. I am positive there are some other immigrants like me that are terrified for their families and want their city to support them. I feel helpless and lonely in my support.”

“Helpless” is definitely the keyword here; and “speechless” – hence our silence at the Weekly on the subject since Russia attacked Ukraine by air, water and land on our Wednesday night, their early morning Thursday, Feb. 24. Just as people everywhere in the world, we wonder if our comment on the matter will do any good. So we checked with Faith in terms of what she wants this community to know.

“This has been the saddest week of my life,” she says, still new to the area, where she relocated with her husband in 2019. Her whole family is still in Ukraine – not in the east and yes, they seem OK for now – and she tries to stay in touch with them as much as she can.

“Look on the map,” she says when asked for the message to the community, asking for nothing in particular but maybe for Americans to open the atlas and at least place this conflict on the map. “Please keep us in mind. Donate to the Ukrainian Army if you can.”

In terms of basics: Ukraine has been a sovereign country, briefly between World War I and World War II, and then again since 1991, after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Despite its short career as a modern state, Ukrainian capital Kyiv is a cultural center 700 years older than Moscow, and the rebellious, freedom-loving independent culture of Ukraine has been percolating and building up since at least the 15th century, fighting for space between the Russian Empire and Poland-Lithuania.

Pacific Grove-based Ukrainian-American Alexander Demushkane says that when he grew up in Ukraine in the ’90s, people were not interested in politics. But whoever follows the history of Ukraine since 1991 knows how fond Ukranians have become of their sovereignty. Twice – in 2004 during the Orange Revolution, and again in 2013 during Euromaidan – Ukrainian civilians showed they are willing to fight for their destiny.

Since the Russian attack last week, they are doing just that. Young Ukrainian men who work in my native Poland quit their jobs and returned to their country to fight. While half a million refugees fled to neighboring Poland (over 280,000), and smaller numbers fled to Slovakia, Hungary and Moldova, countless Ukrainians are defending themselves, including stopping Russian tanks on highways (Russian soldiers seem misinformed and are not willing to or don’t have orders to kill civilians). This situation was reportedly changing in the fifth day of war, March 1, when the Russian offense on Ukraine capital Kyiv intensified.

(Amid conscription orders for reservists, an order from Ukraine’s government now prohibits men ages 18-60 from leaving the country.)

“We are not Russians,” Faith says, in case anybody has any doubts. “We have a different national sense, different mentality.”

Demushkane hopes that Americans can sympathize with Ukraine because the United States knows how painful “the birth of a nation” can be. He refers to the struggles of the American Civil War and hopes that the Ukrainian fight will pay off one day.

“The majority of the people in Ukraine think we have our own destiny,” he says. “Different from Russia.”

It is important to remember that Russia attacked Ukraine already in 2014, during the Obama administration, taking the region of Crimea, and that in two provinces in the east – to a degree Russian-speaking Donetsk and Luhansk that claim independence from Ukraine – the fighting never ceased. Russia has been under partial American sanctions since then. In recent days, Russia managed to make Germany agree to exclude Russians from the SWIFT banking system and send them weapons – an unprecedented move in German foreign policy considered a big no-no since the unification of Germany in 1990.

In addition to the tragedy of brave and wonderful Ukrainian people, I also mourn the helplessness of our international institutions, especially the United Nations with its Security Council, which is weak at best, hypocritical at worst. Rethinking NATO and its purpose is also in order, along with the countries of the European Union embracing responsibility for their defense.

The paradox of the recent months was the fact that Putin didn’t want to negotiate with Ukrainians and didn’t want to talk to Europe. He wanted to talk to “the policeman of the world,” now represented by Biden’s administration, and extract a promise that NATO will not move another inch eastward. That has been Putin’s ask for years. In 1999, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined NATO amid Russian opposition.

Russia was too weak to react. With time, its power grew (even though I believe that for Putin this war is the beginning of his end), while the power of the U.S. and its involvement abroad diminished. With China in its corner, Russia fights for the end of a unipolar world and a lot of countries are cheering. And yes, I do believe that Taiwan might be next.

AGATA POPĘDA is the Weekly’s arts & culture writer.