MAZEPPA, Pa. — It was the fall of 2019 when Doug Walter spent a Saturday afternoon giving a tour of Mazeppa, a small community just outside Lewisburg, to Ukrainian television reporter Anna Levystka.
She'd stumbled across the blog that Doug runs about his hometown, named after 17th-century Ukrainian military leader Ivan Mazeppa.
"I wanted to highlight the life of a town which is somehow connected with Ukraine," Levytska said at the time.
So, she reached out to Doug for an interview, and we tagged along as well.
The pair kept in touch.
But now, their exchanges are no longer just a casual check-in. They've taken on a much more urgent tone. When Russia invaded Anna's country, Doug reached out immediately.
"She got back to me and said, 'We're leaving right away.' And then I just waited to find out the next update, you know, but yeah, I contacted her immediately."
I reconnected with Anna too.
She's safe and was able to leave the country with her 15-year-old son. They're currently in the Netherlands, staying in an office building that was turned into a shelter for Ukrainian refugees.
Anna says she's trying to stay optimistic.
"We want to go home. We still have not even hope but a belief of our victory. We'll go back home. We'll rebuild everything. This is our land."
Anna also sent video showing the damage done by Russian bombs to her father's neighborhood in Kyiv.
He has cancer and refuses to leave Kyiv, despite his daughter's desperate pleas. Anna says it's his form of protest since he can't physically fight in the war.
Although she's worried for her father, Anna says it feels good knowing that people like Doug care enough to make sure she's safe.
"It is really pleasant to know that people who are actually thousands of miles from you, people who saw you only once in their life, care."
"It truly is the thing that the more you get to know people around the world, the more we really are the same. We have a lot of the same likes, dislikes," Walter said.
Sometimes all it takes is an unlikely friendship to remind us the world's a pretty small place.
See more videos on our area’s connection to the Crisis in Ukraine.