Ukraine Refugees Rush to Aid US Tornado Victims

After fleeing the war in their own country, several Ukrainians who've settled in Minnesota reportedly rushed to help those whose lives were upended in a deadly tornado that raked Mississippi in late March.

The group — including refugees Dmytro Fedirko, 34; Denys Pavliuk, 19; Viktoriia Hasiuk, 18; Iryna Hrebenyk, 51; and Sofiia Rudenko, 22 — recounted how they made the quick decision to embark on a 16-hour trip south to donate bottled water and volunteer with aid workers.

"We had to leave our home," Pavliuk told The Washington Post in an interview interpreted by Hrebenyk. "And they don't have a place to go back [to], either."

Pavliuk arrived in Minneapolis with Hasiuk earlier in March, the latest additions to a community of refugees there who fled the Russian invasion, the Post reported — and had been helped by the same nonprofit organization, the American Service.

Aswar Rahman, a Minneapolis-based digital producer, founded the agency in March 2022 after visiting the Polish-Ukrainian border and seeing the challenges facing refugees there, the Post reported.

He told the news outlet he was struck by the kinship that grew in the apartment building where the American Service found housing for Ukrainian refugees, saying those who'd been there for a few weeks or months eagerly helped newcomers with things like buying SIM cards, applying for Social Security numbers and completing post-arrival immigration forms.

"I feel like I have a big family," Rudenko, the American Service's Minnesota director — who arrived in the United States from Ukraine in late December — told the Post.

"I realized that last week, I didn't even cook because my neighbors kept feeding me every day."

When the March 24 tornadoes tore through Mississippi, Rahman told the Post he knew the Ukraine refugees would be eager to help.

"I didn't even think whether I should say yes or no," Rudenko told the Post. "I just started thinking that I need to invite people, like [other] Ukrainians."

None of the Ukrainian volunteers had been in the United States for longer than three months. Pavliuk and Hasiuk didn't mind it had been less than two weeks since they arrived.

"They decided to go immediately and started packing their clothes," Rudenko said. "I guess they didn't unpack it, even."

The group piled into two cars late Monday and drove to Memphis, where they rented a U-Haul van and bought several pallets of water bottles from a Costco, the Post reported.

The Ukrainian group paid for the water themselves.

"I mean, these are folks that have only gotten two or three American paychecks," Rahman told the Post.

Rahman contacted the nonprofit Volunteer Mississippi to ask where the group could be of use. A coordinator directed them to a school being used as a distribution center in the city of Belzoni. They distributed the water there on Wednesday, heading later that day to Silver City, where they helped unload aid and supplies.

The group also left a small gift for Mississippi workers they volunteered with: little yellow-and-blue hearts sewn onto pieces of Ukrainian army uniforms.

The group returned to Minneapolis Thursday, the news outlet reported.

"That's something that is special about our community," Rudenko told the Post. "Because we want to share, to give, and to keep doing that because we feel better, and we feel that we are not alone."