BUFFALO, N.Y. — Most people can wake up from a nightmare.
"This has been three days. For us, it feels like years," said 24-year-old Anastasiya Shmal.
Ukrainians like Shmal are living one.
"We're sleeping in schedules. Like, I would sleep for two hours. I wake up, monitor what's going on. Do we hear sirens? Do we hear shootings? Do we hear explosions," Shmal said.
As Shmal spoke with 2 On Your Side's Danielle Church, she was hiding in a bathroom. She asked us not to disclose where she is in Ukraine for her safety.
Right now it's an endless battle for her friends and even her parents, who are in a more dangerous part of the country, to stay alive. It's creating an endless feeling no human should ever have to experience.
"It's dangerous. It's life-sucking. It's traumatizing," Shmal said. "Russians are bombing civilian houses, so you never know when your house is going to be next. ... My friend, she had her house bombed yesterday."
To find some peace, Shmal is thinking about staying with family in Buffalo.
"There's just a big number of people leaving, and I have been to Buffalo just recently last year, so that was my first thought and my first choice," Shmal said.
However, she says even getting out of Ukraine isn't easy with the whole country turned into a warzone.
Shmal hopes Russia will be stopped before she would even have more time to think about starting a new life in Western New York.
"I don't worry about not having money, about not having a job," Shmal said. "Everything that I can think about right now is, what's going to happen next? Am I going to leave? Are my parents going to leave? Are my friends going to be OK? Is our country going to be OK?"
Shmal hopes Ukraine will stand on top in the end, but she says it's going to require the whole world to come together by spreading awareness about the war, getting local legislators to push for tougher sanctions against Russia, helping to get a no-fly zone over Ukraine, and donating to the Ukrainian Army.
"I feel like if every state in the U.S. and every country in Europe and the world could have this one big protest against war and against Russia, that would mean something to our government," Shmal said.
Meanwhile the people of Ukraine are just trying to protect their people and most of all, their country -- their home.
"We're funding the army, we're making our own weapons, we're signing up for our army," Shmal said. "My friends are shooting Russian tanks from their literal house windows... everybody I know is doing something."
You can donate to local efforts to help Ukraine by clicking here.
