Within less than 24 hours, Chris Loux, a Little Rock-born missionary, saw his life upended as Russian troops stormed into Ukraine.
On Wednesday, Loux was living in Lviv with his Ukrainian fiancee. The two got engaged last week and -- despite the specter of a Russian invasion -- were planning an April wedding.
"We're just trying to live our lives ... tomorrow everything might change," he said in an interview. "We haven't finalized [the wedding date] but we don't want a long engagement."
While many Arkansans with ties to Ukraine were tracking the conflict from halfway around the world, Loux on Thursday morning was fleeing to the Polish border with his fiancee and a colleague.
As missiles struck targets throughout Ukraine and troops stormed across borders on Thursday, Loux, who started working full time in Ukraine in 2015, headed west to safety.
"We're evacuating," he said in an email sent at 8:19 a.m Central Time. "Currently at the border into Poland waiting."
Hours before, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a "special military operation" in Ukraine and turned a mounting threat in reality. The conflict, nearly 6,000 miles from Little Rock, left an assistant professor in Fayetteville wondering about the safety of her cousins in east Ukraine and a former Peace Corps volunteer worried about her host family and friends in the north of the country.
[TELL US: How has the Ukraine-Russia crisis affected you? arkansasonline.com/affect/]
For Sergey Polyakov, a Soviet-born immigrant to Arkansas, the distance has meant his daughter has had to go eight years without seeing her Ukrainian grandmother. With the threat of war escalating earlier this week, Polyakov, who runs Alexa's Creperie in Hot Springs, still doesn't know when they might be reunited.
"My wife is still crying at home because she don't know what we can do to bring [my mother-in-law] to United States," said Polyakov on Tuesday. "Her mom, without husband, she's alone. She don't have no money for survival."
Polyakov's mother-in-law has made three attempts to emigrate to the U.S. Each time, the U.S. embassy in Kyiv rejected her application. Following the Russian invasion on Thursday, Polyakov could not be reached for comment.
On Tuesday, Polyakov, who was born in Donetsk, noted that tensions have long strained relationships between west Ukraine, which is more closely allied with the U.S and Europe, and east Ukraine, which has stronger ties to Russia. The divisions, he said, long predated the separatist war in the Donbas region. On Monday, Putin recognized Donetsk and an adjacent region, Luhansk, as independent republics.
"If you drive into West, they spoke in different Ukrainian language, and if you spoke in Russian they can beat your face," he said. "The same will be with the Westerns when they come East."
Despite the regional differences, Polyakov said he had hoped the crisis would not engulf Ukraine in armed conflict. After completing his obligatory service in the Soviet military, Polyakov said he developed a hatred for war. The political questions at the heart of the conflict, he said, were not worth the potential suffering of thousands of his compatriots.
For some Arkansans with ties to Ukraine, east-west divides have created political rifts between family members.
While both of Nadja Berkovich's parents have roots in Ukraine, Berkovich, a teaching assistant professor at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, said her mother has adopted pro-Russian views of the crisis.
"She believes that the war was started by the Ukrainians and not the criminal Russian president," she said in a message on Thursday.
Recently, Berkovich, who immigrated from Russia after receiving her bachelor's degree, was surprised to find at least one of her colleagues promoting pro-Russian views in the United States. A language teaching assistant on a Fulbright scholarship from Russia told a student she believed Putin wasn't interested in invading Ukraine.
"She said 'no, no, no, it's not going to be war because I read Russian news ... Putin is not interested in a war. Russia has enough territory,'" she said. "I was shocked that she said that. I said, 'Look you are in America, you have more resources. You cannot just keep reading your Russian news as if you're in Russia.'"
Berkovich said watching Russia backslide into totalitarianism made her worried that the government would continue suppressing the rights of Ukrainians and Russians. She pointed to Russian authorities placing journalists on watch lists and charging three teenagers with terrorism after they blew up a virtual rendition of the Federal Security Services building in an online game.
As the invasion progressed on Thursday, Berkovich said she still hadn't heard from her cousins or her mother's close friends in Ukraine.
"[My mother] hopes that our relatives ... have water and gas in the Petrovka/Donetsk area," she said in a text message. "There was no way we [have] of reaching them or my mom's close friends there."
On Thursday, Jessica Roux, a former Peace Corps volunteer who now lives Arkansas, said she noticed a shift in tone when speaking with Ukrainian friends.
"Now for the first time, I sense a genuine fear in the voices and messages from my friends," she said in a text message.
A teacher Roux had worked alongside told her she was worried about food and supplies. Both of the small grocery stores in her town were emptied out and the local bank saw long lines as residents rushed to withdraw money.
While teaching English in northern Ukraine from 2016 to 2018, Roux said the separatist war to the east always felt distant. Although she was only a few hundred miles away from the Donbas region, Roux said the conflict did not often figure into her conversations with Ukrainians.
She did, however, notice a strong national pride from her neighbors.
"Everywhere I went, everyone had this sense of pride of being Ukrainian," she said in an interview on Tuesday. "No one likes Putin ... everyone thought that what he was doing wasn't right. Ukraine is a sovereign state ... it's ridiculous that this is happening."
Loux also noted a strong sense of patriotism among the Ukrainians he met during his mission.
While visiting Kyiv after mass demonstrations in 2014, Loux said he heard stories of the Ukrainians who ousted Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovych and the more than 100 protesters who were killed. The surge in national pride, he said, spread from the capital, emboldening Ukrainians through the country's western region.
In the days leading up to Thursday's invasion, Loux noticed his neighbors in Lviv weren't rattled by the buildup of Russian troops along Ukraine's borders. He said on the eve of the attacks, cafes and restaurants remained open and people calmly went about their lives.
Loux said his evacuation options dwindled on Wednesday as Russia tightened its grip on the country. He was scheduled to return to the U.S. in March but his airline canceled his flight. And, with his recent engagement, he said he wouldn't leave Ukraine without fiancee.
While the rising tensions concerned his family in Arkansas, Loux said his mother had comforted him when she told him she trusted him to make a wise decision about when to evacuate.
"I feel called here," he said on Wednesday. "I've tried to be wise and have a plan ready. You plan for the worst and pray for the best."