On Sunday, the war in Ukraine became more personal for Butler Eagle readers.

We met two traumatized families seeking a safe haven, one they found in Cranberry Township.

Anna Kisel and her sons, Matvey, 12, and Illia, 10, and Irena Tkachenko and her sons, Ivan, 14, and Yegor, 9, arrived in early June to stay with their friend, Yana, and her husband, Maksym Yarmatsevych.

The Yarmatsevych family moved to Butler County from Ukraine 11 years ago.

Their experience was much different from Kisel and Tkachenko. These young mothers arrived in New York with four boys and two suitcases between them, depending on kindness and generosity of friends no longer a world away.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ special “U for U” program allows Ukrainian families to come to the United States and stay for two months with a family who agrees to take financial responsibility for them.

Since the bombing started on their homes Feb. 24, Kisel and Tkachenko have struggled to keep their families safe and fed. Tkachenko first gathered her children inside the walls of their home to avoid the attack. Later, like Kisel’s family, they hid in basements before deciding to flee.

“I never imagined it would happen in my country,” Kisel’s son Matvey said through an interpreter.

Instead of normal concerns about school and lessons, he and the other children faced the grown-up realities of war. The impact can still incite terror even here where they are safe. Fireflies remind them of approaching helicopters; fireworks of bombings.

Tkachenko and her children have already endured seven days of continuous bombing and two months at an uncle’s home, where 14 people shared two rooms, before they fled to Poland.

When the bombing started, Kisel drove her boys to her husband’s workplace where they lived for more than a week with 16 people in a basement as food became scarce and attacks never stopped. The family then started the harrowing journey to western Ukraine with limited options for fuel and no place to hide as the Russian bombing continued.

And now they are in Cranberry Township. The families have allowed us to share their story as they find a haven in our community.

Their experiences should make us embrace our freedom and our families even more. Our struggles with rising prices, supply chain issues and more are seen through a different perspective.

We have no doubt that Butler County residents will open their hearts to help these families and others who find themselves in harm's way.

— DJS