MOOSE JAW — A telephone’s shrill ring at 5 a.m. on Feb. 24, 2022, surprised Snizhana Fomychova, as the voice of a military friend told her to leave Ukraine because war had begun.

The woman was already awake, as she was preparing tea for her ill husband, Artur Levytskyi, and feeding their baby.

“At first, we didn’t believe him (because) it sounded unreal. But just a few minutes later, we heard the first explosions,” Fomychova said recently during a presentation at the Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery.

The couple, who had lived on the Crimean Peninsula for several years, had moved to Kyiv a week earlier because they wanted their children to learn the Ukrainian language. That wasn’t possible on the peninsula because Russia had occupied it since 2014.

Now, with explosions rocking the Ukrai

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