‘Help Us!’ Ukrainian Woman at CPAC Delivers an Utterly Heart-wrenching Plea for Her People
Photo by Sarah Rumpf for Mediaite.
Kateryna Lieshok stood out in the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Elegantly tall, dressed all in white with a yellow-and-blue armband and a small hand-painted sign that said “SAVE UKRAINE,” she spent Sunday morning standing behind the live shot of the Fox Nation broadcast, a poignant messenger for the plight of the Ukrainian people.
Women wearing white for political protests has a long and proud history. The American and British suffragists of the early 20th century wore white dresses to help them be easily visible in crowds and in the black-and-white photography of the era. American women also wore white to march in support of the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s, as did members of Congress at the 2019 and 2020 State of the Union addresses. Damas de Blanco, the “Ladies in White,” are an opposition group in Cuba comprised of the wives, mothers, and other female relatives of dissidents who have been jailed, tortured, or “disappeared” by the communist government.
Lieshok recently completed an MBA at Stetson University in DeLand, Fla., about an hour north of where CPAC is being held. She has a previous MBA from a university in Ukraine and is currently enrolled in a post-graduate program that includes an internship with UberJets Technologies.
She told Mediaite that she came to CPAC to “bring awareness to what’s happening” in her hometown of Chernihiv, which is located near Chernobyl and the capital city of Kyiv — and along Ukraine’s border with Russia.
International media has reported on countless stories in recent days showing the tenacity of the Ukrainian people, and Lieshok had a very clear idea what help was needed from Western allies. “We need help in the sky,” she said. “We are good on the ground.”
“I just want to tell about my family, and what they experience right now,” she continued. Her mother, father, brother, and grandfather are all back home in Ukraine.
“The Ukrainian people are very peaceful” and “hardworking people,” said Lieshok, but “it’s very hard for them to survive this.”
Her brother is sick, she said, getting emotional, and the family was constantly having to hide in a shelter, meaning her brother couldn’t work very much.
The Russians have “bombed in our cities, they bombed in our kindergartens, they bombed in our hospitals, they bombed in our apartments, our houses.”
“I just want to say that, we fight for our land, we fight for our freedom — we fight for all Europe’s freedom,” she continued.
“We need help,” was her plea to America. “We’re asking if you can help us and protect our sky. We can protect our land, we can protect our land. Just help us with the sky, with ammunition.”
Support from other nations, she said, “really helps” to bring up the Ukrainians’ “spirit.”
“The Ukrainian people are strong, and we will fight for our land and for our freedom.”
Lieshok said that she appreciated people she had met at CPAC supporting her and agreeing with her message of “Save Ukraine,” and who had told her they were praying for her and her family.
She added that she was praying for her family too, of course, and was on the phone with them “all the time.”
She confessed then that she wasn’t able to sleep, and said she had just been on the phone with her father a few minutes earlier but he had to cut the call short. “Honey, I need to go to the shelter,” he said to her.
Lieshok then began to cry, and I turned off the video camera. We spoke for a few more minutes about her educational plans and her prayers for her family and her country. She’s keeping a close eye on her phone, getting sporadic text message updates from her parents.
Watch above. Video by Sarah Rumpf for Mediaite.
