Saskatchewan is commemorating one year since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Friday.
Saskatoon and Regina will be holding candle-lit vigils at their respective city halls at 6 p.m.
The public is encouraged to attend and bring Ukrainian flags to stand in solidarity with Ukraine.
Global News had the opportunity to speak with a journalist from Saskatoon who has been primarily based in Saskatoon for the last decade.
Editor of Lviv Today, Lee Reaney, said he was covering the Olympics in China right after the war began.
“The entire Ukrainian team had difficulties getting to Bejing,” Reaney said. “It was unlike anything that I had done before. Nobody wanted to talk about sport, everyone wanted to talk about what was happening back home.
“(The athletes) would call home and their families were in bomb shelters – they could hear bombs in the background. We had one athlete whose father was kidnapped by the Russians.”
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He said he talked to many whose homes and buildings were destroyed.
After the Olympics, Reaney went on to stay in Romania for a few months.
“I travelled around, meeting refugees in several countries around Europe before it was safe to return home (to Lviv) in late May.”
Lviv, Ukraine has now turned into a hub for travelling refugees and people around the world.
“Every humanitarian organization in the world is based in Lviv right now so the city is buzzing. We virtually have daily air raids.”
He said despite being approximately 1, 200 kilometers from the front lines of the war, the city was hit with no less than five missiles last week.
“For two to three months, virtually every business in the city was run by a generator. Every business smelled like a gas station,” Reaney said.
He said that now, energy levels in the city are almost back to normal.
Reaney will continue to report events on the ground in Ukraine under the air-raid sirens and distant explosions as the war pushes on.
“When you are there in person, it’s just a surreal experience… it’s the space of the unknown.”
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