Mar 18, 2025 By Parker Burroughs 3 min read

One evening last week, Aina Kyrpychova’s cellphone began blaring a warning of incoming Russian missiles. She quickly began scrolling through an application that Ukrainians use to learn where rockets and drones have hit. Just a few days earlier, a missile strike had killed 11 people just 700 yards from her home in Dnipro.

She was not so much frightened for her own safety, however, because she was 5,125 miles away in Washington, Pa. Her fear and anxiety were for her husband and 14-year-old daughter at home, where the three-year-long war has only increased in its ferocity.

Kyrpychova, 39, and five other Ukrainian women spent last week here as delegates of the Open World program of the Congressional Office for International Leadership. They were hosted by the Washington Rotary Club, which arranged home stays, excursions and meetings with politicians and community organizations.

One of the women, Olga Altunina, is a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, and all team members are leaders of organizations that assist internally displaced people: those who have lost their homes, their cities, and in many cases, family members and all of their possessions.

Since President Trump began proposing talks with Vladimir Putin and a cease-fire, the Russians have only escalated their indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets.

“In Kharkiv, up until a month ago, there were an average of two rocket attacks every day,” said Alina Atamas, 33. “Now there are 26 attacks per day.”

Atamas was forced to leave Yalta in 2014 when Russia seized the Crimean peninsula. She was displaced again when the fighting reached Kharkiv. She and her 5-year-old son now live in a village in Western Ukraine, where her nonprofit Faynadiya helps resettle families. But her husband must remain working in Kharkiv, which is the country’s second-largest city and is close to the Russian border.

For all who met them last week, the stress of war was noticeable in their faces, but it was their gregariousness and infectious laughter that will be remembered.

They came here wondering what their reception would be like, worrying that American people would have followed their president and turned against them. They arrived in the U.S. just a week after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was ambushed in the White House and just two days after Trump halted military aid to Ukraine.

“We are so grateful for all the help we have received from the United States,” Valentine Uvarova, 39, said after speaking before a gathering of Rotarians and members of the Washington County Bar Association last Tuesday. “We thought, maybe, Americans would no longer support us. But we were wrong.”

Wherever they went last week they found that support from people who admired their courage and tenacity. Some of those here have Ukrainian roots; some, like the immigrants and refugees from Haiti and Ukraine that they met at the Literacy Council, know their trauma all too well. At the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey game Thursday, they stood to cheer for the team and waved their nation’s flag. Their image was shown on the scoreboard, drawing a huge ovation from the crowd.

Last week, it seemed as though the only ones NOT supporting the Ukrainian people were at the very top of our federal government.

Eventually, the war will end, and we can only hope that it will be a just and lasting peace. Our Ukrainian friends deserve our support – not just in fighting oppression and achieving that peace – but in rebuilding their country and their lives when it is all over.

Parker Burroughs is retired editor of the Observer-Reporter.