Members of Anacortes nonprofit under fire in Ukraine

Two members of the Anacortes nonprofit Sunflower F.U.N.D., who are in Odesa, Ukraine, providing aid to the Ukrainian people, were sheltering in place Thursday night amid drone and missile attacks by the Russian military.

The organization’s founder, Markéta Vorel of Guemes Island, is in Odesa with Andre Anderson, a British citizen who lives in Oregon.

Vorel provided video of the attacks to the Skagit Valley Herald. The video shows the dark sky going bright due to the attacks.

The threat began in late afternoon in Odesa when Russian fighter jets deployed toward Ukraine, Vorel said.

“Ukrainian defense countered that attack and the MiGs flew back and landed at home in (Russia) without engaging weapons,” Vorel said in an email.

“… To defend against the nightly attacks, Odesa and all other major metropolitan areas rely almost exclusively on Patriot missiles, which have been provided by the U.S. as part of the military support package for the last three years,” she said. “It is not an overstatement to say that these defense systems have saved thousands of lives and spared Ukraine untold destruction.”

According to previous reports on the Sunflower F.U.N.D.’s blog, members of the Anacortes nonprofit have previously felt the impacts of missile attacks in Odesa.

“I’ve heard explosions on my previous trips to Ukraine, but this was the first time I could actually feel the impact of a ballistic missile reverberate my internal organs,” Vorel said on the blog. “Like a heart attack in the middle of an earthquake, followed by an eternally long second of silence that expunges all atoms of oxygen from the air.”

On Wednesday, U.S. citizens were among the survivors of a Russian military strike against a hotel in the city Kryvyi Rih.

Vorel is a Czech-American whose family immigrated to the U.S. from behind the Iron Curtain to escape the control exerted on their country by the former Soviet Union.

When writing the word Russia, she does not capitalize it as a sign of protest. She did not capitalize Russia in her email Thursday to the Skagit Valley Herald.

“Odesa gets targeted daily by russian missiles, usually in the afternoon,” Vorel said in her email. “In Odesa, the threat can be (a) russian MiGs or fighter jets deployed from Crimea or russia loaded with ballistic missiles or rockets; (b) russian warships deployed to the Black Sea with missiles; and (c) drones deployed from Crimea and other occupied territory.”

Vorel said that Sunflower F.U.N.D. members will not be evacuating.

“We came here to Odesa knowing of the threat. We could have turned back and gone back to the village. But this is the russian roulette,” she said.

The Sunflower F.U.N.D. was founded in May 2023. It provides direct funding and humanitarian aid to Ukraine amid the invasion of the country by Russia.

Members of the nonprofit are in Ukraine to provide humanitarian aid and relief, including the building of a playground for their Odesa partner organization, Path Home Women and Children’s Shelter.

Recently, the organization surpassed $300,000 in donations to fund its work.