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On a grey Thursday morning, people trudge into the Astrodome Events Centre building behind the golden-domed Ukrainian Catholic Church in Parma, Ohio, to buy "pirohi", a popular dumpling dish.
Inside at a small canteen, all are in shock over the news of the Russian invasion of their homeland.
“Everyone’s upset,” says Linda Lishchuk Hupert, a Ukrainian-American artist who has family in western Ukraine and the southern city of Odessa.
Ms Lishchuk Hupert most recently spoke to a cousin living near Kolomyya, in the west of the country, earlier this week.
“She said then that she’s just waiting [for an attack],” she says. “She would like to go to her two sons who are in Poland but she needs a visa.”
Parma, a city comprised largely of single-family homes, small shops and strip malls, is twinned with Lviv in western Ukraine. It has the largest Ukrainian-American population in Ohio, with more than 4,000 of the 79,000 or so residents of Ukrainian descent.
A credit union called Ukrainian Federal and a host of Ukrainian-owned and themed shops, beauty salons and bakeries dot the streets.
Outside a bank on state Road 94, two men run the yellow-and-blue Ukrainian flag up a pole. Heroes from Ukrainian history are depicted on lampposts around the area as locals react with horror to the events unfolding across the Atlantic.
A short drive north of the church, Ukrainian-speaking shoppers have gathered inside the Lviv International Food Market to discuss the news that came in overnight.
For Maria Lutsishim, a pensioner who moved from Staryi Sambir in western Ukraine to Cleveland 27 years ago, fear for her loved ones back home is rising.
“I spoke to my cousin,” Ms Lutsishim says. “She’s staying at home, hiding in her basement. But this morning my daughter-in-law tried calling her cousins in Kiev several times. There was no answer. She couldn’t get through.”
Ms Lutsishim, who was a cleaner in Cleveland before suffering a stroke years ago, says she is surprised by the speed of events.
“President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy has been telling people to be calm, he didn’t want to speak about a war,” she says. “Then we woke up to this news this morning.”
While community members say a public protest has yet to be organised, prayer services have been planned at churches across the district for Thursday evening.
Rallies are expected to be held in the coming days.
Ukrainian immigrants moved to Cleveland to work in the city’s huge steel mills in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
They established a bustling community, first in the district of Tremont, south of downtown Cleveland.
By the 1950s, the Ukrainian Museum-Archives was established in Tremont by scholars who fled Nazi terror squads in Ukraine a decade earlier.
Later waves of immigrants settled in Parma, a suburban area 12 kilometres to the south.
Today, about 80,000 Ukrainians call Ohio home, with close to half in Parma and other districts in and around Cleveland.
Sergiy Vashchenko, an insurance agent, wears a worried and worn look having ducked outside his office in north-east Parma for a cigarette.
From the doorway of his office, he says he has hardly slept, having failed to reach relatives in Kiev by phone since the Russian invasion.
“First of all [we need] real weapons — Patriot systems,” he says when asked how the West should respond.
Mr Vashchenko, who came to the US 24 years ago, believes there is little President Joe Biden will do to stop a takeover of Ukraine.
“Sanctions? That’s not enough. They only work in the long term,” he says. “Putin sees that nobody can stop him and he will go as far as he is allowed to go.”
Mr Vashchenko says Ukrainians in the area are gathering money and aid to be sent home as the prospect of a refugee crisis on Europe’s borderlands and an entrenched conflict begin to unfold.
Many Ukrainian Americans in Parma are not fans of Mr Biden, with a majority voting for Donald Trump in the past two presidential elections.
Ohio’s Ukrainian community has historically voted Republican, unnerved by the historical legacy of the socialist Soviet Union and the Democratic Party’s real or perceived leftist tendencies.
Rob Portman, a Republican senator and co-chairman of the Ukrainian Senate Caucus, led a delegation of US politicians to Ukraine last month and enjoys considerable visibility among Ukrainian Americans here.
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A Ukrainian soldier walks past the shell of a burnt military vehicle, on a street in Kiev. AP -
A screengrab from CCTV footage shows a missile hitting a residential building in Kiev. Reuters -
A man inspects a broken window, after shelling carried out by Russian troops in the Ukrainian capital. Reuters -
Ukrainian soldiers take positions outside a military centre as two cars burn on a street in Kiev. AP -
Medical specialists transport a woman, who was wounded in the shelling of an apartment building, to an ambulance, as her husband looks on. Reuters -
A woman outside her apartment building after it was damaged by a rocket, in Kiev. AP -
A Ukrainian police officer detains a driver on a street in Kiev. AP -
A soldier's helmet with a bullet hole on a street in the Ukrainian capital. AP -
Ukrainian soldiers walk by a damaged vehicle, at the site of fighting with Russian troops, in Kiev. Reuters -
Ukrainian policemen move parrots to safety after a high-rise apartment block was damaged by shelling in Kiev. EPA -
A screengrab from a video shows rescue workers carrying a person at the site of a damaged multi-storey residential building, south-west of the Ukrainian capital. Reuters -
A building damaged by shelling carried out by Russian troops in Kiev. EPA -
Helga Tarasova comforts her daughter Kira Shapovalova as they wait in an underground shelter during a bombing alert in Kiev. AFP -
A man walks past a building damaged by a rocket attack in the Ukrainian capital. AP -
Emergency services workers near an apartment building damaged by shelling in Kiev. Reuters -
Ukrainian soldiers collect unexploded shells in the capital. AFP -
An apartment building damaged by shelling in Kiev. Reuters -
Debris of a burnt military truck on a street in Kiev. AP -
Natali Sevriukova stands next to her home after a rocket attack in Kiev, Ukraine. AP -
People on foot and in cars move to cross from Ukraine to Poland at the Korczowa-Krakovets border crossing following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. AFP -
Servicemen from the Ukrainian National Guard in central Kiev. Reuters -
Ukrainian soldiers in downtown Kiev after Russian troops reached the outskirts of the capital. AP Photo -
Police officers detain demonstrators in St. Petersburg, Russia. Hundreds of people gathered in Moscow and St. Petersburg on Thursday, protesting against Russia's attack on Ukraine. Similar protests took place in other Russian cities, and activists were also arrested. AP Photo -
Hungarian troops in Vasarosnameny, close to the border with Ukraine, prepare to help refugees. AP Photo -
Wrecked Russian army rocket launchers in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Reuters -
The aftermath of a rocket attack in Kiev. AP Photo -
A US Air Force jet refuels over Poland. Reuters -
Devastation after shelling in Ukraine's Luhansk enclave. Reuters -
The Royal Welsh Battlegroup from the UK makes its way to Estonia. Reuters -
Firefighters tackle a blaze in a building in Kiev. AFP -
The wreckage of an unidentified aircraft in a residential area in Kiev. Reuters -
Smoke rises near the Ukrainian Defence Ministry in Kiev. Reuters -
Russian military helicopters fly over the Ukrainian capital. AP -
An anxious wait to board a train to leave Kiev as the attack loomed. AP Photo -
Ukrainian servicemen on tanks in the Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine. AP Photo -
Ukraine troops said this destroyed armoured vehicle outside Kharkiv belonged to the Russian army. Reuters -
Rescuers at the crash site after a Ukraine armed forces Antonov aircraft was shot down in Kiev, according to the Ukrainian authorities. Reuters -
Ukrainian tanks that aim to repel an attack by the Russian military in the Luhansk enclave of Ukraine. AFP -
A Ukrainian State Border Guard Service base is ablaze after heavy shelling near Kiev. Reuters -
Damaged radar at a Ukrainian military plant outside Mariupol. Officials in Kiev say Russian troops have rolled into the country from the north, east and south. AP Photo -
Firefighters attend a blaze after bombing in the eastern Ukrainian town of Chuguiv, as Russian armed forces appeared to be bombarding Ukraine from several directions. AFP -
A traffic jam in Kiev, with many Ukrainians leaving their capital after Russian troops entered. EPA -
The Border Service of Ukraine released CCTV footage purporting to show Russian military vehicles passing a checkpoint to drive into Crimea. AP -
A man picks up fragments of military materiel on the street after an apparent Russian strike in Kharkiv, Ukraine. AP -
Workers load the debris of a rocket on to a lorry in the aftermath of Russian shelling in Kiev. AP -
Emergency staff treat an injured man after bombing in Chuguiv. AFP -
An American woman in distress after crossing the border to flee the violence in Ukraine, in Medyka, Poland. Reuters -
People take shelter in a Kiev subway station, after Russian President Vladimir Putin authorised a military operation in eastern Ukraine. Reuters -
People in a rush near Kiev-Pasazhyrskyi railway station in the Ukrainian capital. AFP -
A Flightradar24.com screengrab shows a dearth of civilian aircraft in Ukrainian airspace after the Russian invasion. AP -
The aftermath of bombing in Chuguiv. AFP -
A Ukrainian rocket launcher vehicle prepares for action. Reuters -
Cars are driven across a field to leave the city of Kharkiv. Reuters -
People chant, carry placards and wave Ukrainian flags as they gather in Sydney, to demonstrate against Russian attacks on its neighbour. AP -
People with many of their belongings packed take shelter in a Metro station in Kiev. AFP -
Emergency services at the scene of an explosion at a military unit building in Kiev. EPA -
A Kiev resident sweeps up debris after Russian shelling. AP -
The first 40 soldiers of the 173rd US Army Airborne Brigade step off a military plane in Latvia. EPA -
More damage from shelling in Kiev. AP -
People wait at a bus station to travel to western parts of Ukraine, after violence in the east. Reuters -
A woman carries her cats in a quest for a safe haven. AFP -
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy holds an urgent government meeting in Kiev to discuss the next step. AFP -
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and foreign policy chief Josep Borrell give a joint statement in Brussels, updating the press about the situation in Ukraine. EPA -
People survey the damage after bombing in Chuguiv. AFP -
A building on fire in Chuguiv. AFP
Ms Lishchuk Hupert says she finds it difficult to believe that many Ukrainian Americans support Donald Trump or would vote Republican.
“I mean, he praised Putin [for invading Ukraine],” she says, after pausing to allow a group of fellow Ukrainian Americans to walk out of earshot.
“Trump has just as much of an ego as Putin.”
Despite the territorial gains Russian forces have made in such a short time, Ms Lishchuk Hupert believes Ukrainians are far from a spent force.
“Ukrainians are prepared this time. They’ve had years of training,” she says. “I think Putin is going to be surprised.”
