As a miles-long convoy of Russian troops pushed toward Ukraine's capital on Tuesday, organizers behind the group "Hawaii Stands With Ukraine" called on the local community for support.
Elena Roud moved to Hawaiʻi from Ukraine about 30 years ago. Now she's a realtor with Locations Hawaiʻi — and one of the group's organizers.
Roud said she's pretty much always on the phone with family and friends in the city of Dnipro, a few hundred miles southeast of Kyiv.
"Our city is a little bit more protected and less damaged physically than other cities. We have a very big volunteer center in our town," Roud said. "So now people are just watching what devastation, what happened in Kharkiv or Kyiv, and other small towns. And that's very heartbreaking."
She returns to Dnipro every year and recently bought tickets to visit in mid-March. Though her children were raised on Oʻahu, they also visit frequently.
"We were just positive that nothing like that could even — it's not possible that this would happen," she told Hawaiʻi Public Radio.
She said Ukrainians are responding with strength and resistance to Russia's aggressive stance.
"Now Putin comes and tells our country that we don't think you guys deserve the chance to be as a country. People feel it's not fair. People want independence, they want to be recognized," she told The Conversation. "It's just been a lot of awareness and message that Ukraine is ready to fight the Putin regime. If nobody else cares, then we will."
Roud said more rallies are planned this Friday and Sunday in Honolulu.
"We will continue every week and hopefully we don't have to continue it for very long," Roud said.
This interview aired on The Conversation on March 1, 2022. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
