Ukrainian mayor scrambles to safety when air-raid sirens go off during interview
Global News
The idea of establishing a sister-city relationship came after Oleksandr Tretyak saw all the support coming from Kelowna, B.C. residents on social media.
It was a stark reminder of the reality that Ukrainians are facing daily.
On Wednesday afternoon, Global News was on a Zoom call with Oleksandr Tretyak, mayor of the northwestern city of Rivne, when air-raid sirens began blaring.
“I have to escape to a bomb shelter,” said Tretyak, whose city of 300,000 people is about four hours west of Kyiv, close to the border with Belarus.
Tretyak took his laptop and continued the Zoom call from a bomb shelter, something he and residents are getting all too familiar with.
“We have to spend hours and hours in bomb shelters and this is terrible when you have to wake up with your kids at 2 a.m., 3 a.m., 4 a.m., and go down to bomb shelters to hide,” he told Global News.
Also on the call from B.C.’s Okanagan region was Denys Storozhuk, president of the newly formed group, Kelowna Stands With Ukraine.
Tretyak and Storozhuk discussed the idea of Kelowna and Rivne becoming sister cities.
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