A group of area musicians are taking up the Ukrainian cause with guitars and amplifiers this evening in Morgantown.
The “Free Ukraine” concert begins at 6 p.m. at the 123 Pleasant St. venue and will feature performances by Emma Birdz, Tommy Thompson III, Ted Kisko, Sound Situation, Chris Haddox, The Sages, Chicory Roots and Tuck Band.
Admission is $10, with all proceeds going to purchase medical and technology supplies for refugees and other Ukrainian citizens simply caught in the middle of war.
“We’re over here but our families are over there, and we can’t stop the fight,” Khrystyna Pelchar said.
Pelchar, 26, is a WVU doctoral student in political science who hails from Lviv, a sprawling city in western Ukraine.
There was nothing “political,” she said, about Vladimer Putin’s massing of troops and tanks in plain sight at the borders of her home country in the weeks of January and February 2022.
Feb. 24, that year: Tanks began churning the earth. Missiles and mortar rounds screamed through the air, seeking (and finding) civilian targets.
The invasion was on – and it hasn’t let up.
Almost immediately, Pelchar and others at WVU and in Morgantown with ties to the besieged country began organizing.
The result was the Ukrainian Community of Morgantown, a coalition that has raised thousands of dollars for the cause, while arranging safe passage for refugee families wishing to settle here and elsewhere.
Tonight’s concert is part of a series of events this week organized by the community to raise money and awareness for that effort.
A roundtable discussion featuring Pelchar and Mark Vodianyi, a fellow doctoral student from Ukraine, is set for 5 p.m. Thursday in the Mountaineer Room at WVU’s Mountainlair.
The pair will be joined by academics Erik Herron and Lisa DiBartolomeo, both experts on the region who lived there and did research there.
A rally scheduled for 5 p.m. Friday in front of the Mountainlair will mark the anniversary of the invasion, Pelchar said.
“We can all be together,” the doctoral student said.
Another information session and movie screening is set for next week, she said.
“Key WAR Events: Day 738,” is the title of the panel talk, which will convene 4 p.m. March 1 in the Mountainlair Commons.
The discussion that day will be followed by a screening at 5:30 p.m. in Mountainlair Gluck Theater of “26 Days in Mariupol,” a chronicle of life in the city that was virtually reduced to rubble by the onslaught.
Pelchar wants Westerners to remember that civilians are still caught in the middle of everything and that “collateral damage” consists of people she loves.
For the most part, she’s still able to communicate with her family via social media, she said.
“My sister is 19, but when I talk to her it’s like she’s old and weary. She doesn’t sound like a 19-year-old.”
Ariah Ben Yehudah, a Tel Aviv policeman who joined the Ukrainian cause as a combat medic, described the grim conditions during a recent visit to Morgantown.
“We’re dug in and they’re dug in,” he said. “It’s like trench warfare in World War I.”
