Four years ago, when Russia first invaded Ukraine, Oksana Koledova regularly checked in on her brother on the front lines, where he was fighting against Russian forces.
Her brother was wounded two years ago when his vehicle was fired on. He now brings resources to fellow troops after he was pulled back to help care for a sick relative.
Koledova is still checking in on loved ones facing down bullets and bombs. Most days she waits for a short message from a friend on the front line: “450” means he’s “safe and OK.”
“But sometimes there’s no answer,” Koledova said. “Whenever we don’t receive a message, there’s anxiety.”
For Koledova, a Vernon Hills resident who moved to the U.S. from Ukraine 19 years ago, the fight for her home country is her “daily life.” Her husband is a Ukrainian diplomat, and her father has been running meals and supplies to soldiers since the start of the war.
An estimated 1.8 million soldiers have been killed, wounded or are missing on both sides, according to a report last month by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. But that number doesn’t include many of Koledova’s loved ones who have returned from the battlefield with mental health struggles.
“It’s been very hard for them to return to a normal life,” she said.
Iryna Potishma is among some of the 5.9 million refugees who have fled the country as Russia continues to occupy Ukraine’s territory. More than 40,000 Ukrainians have found new homes in the Chicago area. Her loved ones, who live in the western part of the country, have mostly been spared from the battle, though months ago, missiles struck a building near her brother’s apartment.
Potishma’s brother, the father of a 1-year-old child, has so far avoided the draft but still must check in every month as eligibility requirements are updated to bring more soldiers into the grinding war of attrition.
“We never know if my brother or stepfather will be on that list,” she said. “They never know if [the missiles will land] in our neighborhood. ... It’s been four years and nothing has changed.”
Adapting to life in the U.S. has been her own struggle, both in moving across continents and knowing what her loved ones face at home.
“It’s been very difficult to build a new life because it’s not so easy to just forget life in Ukraine,” Potishma said. “Your family and friends are still there, but you have this chance here to live another life.”
The U.S. has brokered talks with Moscow and Kyiv as part of a push for peace, but disagreements over Russian-occupied Ukrainian land, about 20% of its territory, and postwar Ukrainian security have stalled progress.
In January, a group of European politicians traveled to Chicago to try to drum up support for Ukraine in Chicago’s Ukrainian, Polish and Lithuanian diaspora communities after they said they were mostly rebuffed by a Republican-controlled Congress that’s not eager to buck the Trump administration on Ukraine funding and NATO membership. The delegation also met with Mayor Brandon Johnson and Sen. Dick Durbin, among others.
During the visit, Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, a Ukrainian member of parliament and former journalist, said her husband was texting her from Ukraine to say that a Russian attack on the power grid had left their home without power for 20 hours and counting. “Russian negotiating tactics,” she said.
Klympush-Tsintsadze says Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t serious about peace, as evidenced by the nearly 15,000 civilians killed in Ukraine, according to the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission. Russian peace proposals would require Ukraine to give up territory and abandon any hope of joining NATO, which she said was unacceptable.
“There are no people in the world who want this war to end more than we do,” she said. “We are in a Russia-orchestrated trap.”
Koledova returned from Kyiv on Monday and said life there has both changed and remained the same. Frequent power outages occur between one-hour flows of electricity. People continue to go to work.
She said four years on, she beams when she considers her home nation standing strong.
“I feel pride,” Koledova said of her homeland. “We plan to return this summer, even if the war is still ongoing. … This is our home.”