People draped in flags and holding sunflowers gather in Tipp Hill to pray for Ukraine

Syracuse, N.Y. — Kateryna Onufriychuk and her mother stood outside St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church Sunday as the snow fell and the Ukrainian flag was raised.

Onufriychuk came to pray and think about her family back home, surrounded by tanks.

“They’re all in bomb shelters,” Onufriychuk said. “My grandma, my aunt, my uncle, my cousins.”

Onufriychuk was born in Ukraine and immigrated to Syracuse in 2006, when she was 10.

She and her mother have been communicating with their family in eastern Ukraine and receiving hour-by-hour updates. Today, however, the communication hasn’t been as clear.

“They’re scared. They’re trying not to panic,” she said. The town her family lives in is near a nuclear plant and has had Russian tanks rolling through it, she said.

The two women were part of a group that filled the church to standing room only.

Mixed in with people in their Sunday best were churchgoers wrapped in the Ukrainian flag. Others had on jerseys. Many wore the traditional dress of Ukraine, the vyshyvanky, a specially embroidered shirt.

The service, mainly in Ukrainian, was a prayer for the country and its people. Russia invaded Ukraine four days ago and has started to focus attacks on the capital of Kyiv.

Pastor Mihai Dubovici, one of the clergy who led the service, called the invasion “a humanitarian crisis of immense proportions.”

“Russia’s attack on the Ukraine constitutes the greatest security crisis on the European continent since World War II,” said Lida Buniak, the president of the Syracuse branch of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America.

Buniak echoed the calls of many to exclude Russia from events, committees, and organizations across the world. She also stated Putin needed to be tried as a war criminal.

After listing many of the financial challenges the country faces, Buniak had her daughter stand.

“My daughter is making bracelets that express how we feel about Ukraine and what we think of Putin, I’m not going to say anything else because we’re in church,” Buniak said, causing the crowd to chuckle.

Other ways to help are to write your government representatives urging them to help, she said, as well as asking local vendors to not stock products from Russia.

“May God protect Ukraine and our extraordinarily determined and always resilient people,” she said.

A choir came on stage and sang the Ukrainian national anthem, moving many in the audience to tears. One man wept through the entire service.

The choir also sang a hymn in Ukrainian.

After the service, the crowd moved outside and joined people who could not fit inside the church. The groups united and stood with signs and sunflowers — the national flower of Ukraine.

The group made its way across the street to the statute of poet Taras Shevchenko. As the group sang the national anthem, a group of children raised the Ukrainian flag.

Onufriychuk’s family is trying to get refugee status but they’re unsure what will happen. She said they stay away from the television and spend their time praying.

“The world has stood still,” Onufriychuk said as she stood under the flag, now raised next to the United States flag.

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