'Be prepared for difficult days': Maritime Ukrainian communities worry for friends, family

In the early-morning hours Thursday, Russian troops launched a wide-ranging attack, the sound of explosions rattling a number of cities, in what Ukrainian officials called a “full-scale war.”

More than 6,000 kilometres away, members of the Ukrainian community in Halifax rallied to call attention to the attack.

“To be honest, many people did not see that this will happen,” said Andre Mereshuk, president of the Nova Scotia branch of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.

Mereshuk said it was a sleepless night for Ukrainians far from their home country with family and friends now caught in conflict.

“Some of them spent the whole night in bomb shelters, some of them underground in subway stations, some of them stay home. But everyone was wake up because of the missiles attack,” he said.

In Lower Sackville, N.S., Nataliya Peleshok says she saw the news online while at her Ukrainian bakery, Talya’s Taverna. While she left the country several decades ago, she still has friends living in central Ukraine.

“It happened very quick for me, and I called to my friends,” she said.  

Speaking to them on the phone was the only thing she could do to offer comfort from so far away.

Peleshok says there has been conflict between the Ukrainian and Russian governments in different areas of Ukraine for years, but added this large-scale attack by President Vladimir Putin is senseless.

Growing up, she said Russians were her friends and neighbours.

“We have friendship, we have relationship, we live together. I used to live with Russian people too, and now it’s very strange and very bad for both countries,” she added.

Russian native Alina Kirasanova feels the same way.

“We really hoped that things would not go so far,” she said in a Zoom interview from her home in Tantallon, N.S.

Kirasanova runs a Russian school in Halifax. She condemned Putin’s aggressive and violent move.

“It shouldn’t be happening,” she said. “Even if they have any issues, they should be dealing with them as politics, and not as war, as enemies.”

Putin has threatened foreign countries who may interfere.

Many world leaders, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, have denounced the attack.

Some nations, like Canada, are now imposing sanctions and financial penalties against Russian elites and political figures -- a move members of the Ukrainian community here hope will help.

“Hope, always we have hope,” said Mereshuk. "But at the same time we need to prepared for difficult days.”