“She has to conserve her time and energy there to surviving.” Warwick woman supports friend in Ukraine

The pair that connected through an online poetry group during the pandemic are checking in daily.

WARWICK, RI (WLNE) –

Every morning, Brittney Guertin-Artz says her day for the last week has started with a weary optimism as she logs in to Facebook to make sure a friend in Ukraine is still alive. “I wake up and I’ll check what time it is and will just open it up to Facebook..and you know, just pray that there’s an update on there.”

That friend is Kharkiv resident Oleksandra Bakun, whom Brittney connected with over a global poetry sharing group during the pandemic. Yet in sharing such personal poems, the pair started to become friends. When war began in Ukraine, Guertin-Artz began checking in more often – and learned that while Bakun had multiple invitations of places to go, she couldn’t leave her mother.

“I have invitations to stay in pretty much every country in Europe and even the U.S., but because my Mom is – first of all she doesn’t have a passport, she cannot find it,” explains Bakun. Even with paperwork, however, Bakun says her mother’s health also depends on electricity they can’t risk losing as she remains reliant on an oxygen machine following complications from Covid-pneumonia.

Bakun shared her first-hand experience with ABC6 News, saying that while they have electricity, other resources have been scarce in Kharkiv. The city is one she says is strategically important for Russia to capture, and shelling hasn’t seemed to stop. “Everything is shelled for five days. I have heard subsequent explosions and I’m scared to go outside of the apartment,” sayd Bakun. On the rare times she has left her home, there hasn’t been much to find. “Everything is closed, nothing can be bought. No food, nothing.”

From kindergartens to blood donation centers, Bakun says she’s heard explosions as close as two blocks away from her home. “You don’t know what has been shelled, where are the explosions, what has been injured now.”

While she may not be able to flee, Bakun has made a point to use her powers of the pen for good in sharing updates any time she hears an explosion personally, and spends her time translating information from all across the country in an effort to document history.

“I cannot fight with weapons, but I can fight with truth and information and that’s what I’m doing.”