Ukrainian Americans living in New Jersey find solace in volunteering for war effort

While the Russian invasion of Ukraine has fallen off the front pages, Roksolana Vaskul Leshchuk still finds her life upended with no end in sight.

Jun 16, 2022, 11:41 PM

Updated 919 days ago

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While the Russian invasion of Ukraine has fallen off the front pages, Roksolana Vaskul Leshchuk still finds her life upended with no end in sight.
Vaskul Leshchuk’s sister brought her two daughters to live with Vaskul Leshchuk in New Jersey to escape the war. While she adapts to the role of caretaker for her two nieces, she still has her job as an anesthesiologist.
There are also the long nights spent volunteering with the aid effort here at home, all amid the constant stream of horrific news from abroad.
"Sometimes I just cry in the car on the way to work and back," she told News 12 New Jersey. "One day I broke down and my older daughter - we just cried the whole day."
On today's Brian's Positively New Jersey, we visit with Vaskul Leshchuk and other volunteers at the Ukrainian Cultural Center of New Jersey in Whippany, where volunteers come every night to fill trucks with food, clothing and medical supplies for the war effort. We find people struggling with the trauma of seeing their homeland torn apart by war and whose greatest therapy may be the daily hard work of doing whatever they can to help.