Somewhere in London, DePaul alumnus Julian Hayda, 29, sits and anxiously awaits the day he’ll be able to return to Ukraine — his motherland, and the country he and his wife, Summer, recently made their new temporary home. With Hayda intending to become a priest, they planned to live there for the next four years while he completed his seminary and they both did journalistic work.

Their plans have now been put to a halt as decades of turmoil between Russia and Ukraine have led to Russia surrounding Ukraine’s borders with tens of thousands of troops, ready to potentially invade the country at any moment.

Americans were advised by the U.S. State Department in late December not to travel to Ukraine, citing “increased threats” from the Russian military. President Joe Biden affirmed Friday that the U.S. has intelligence that Russian President Vladimir Putin has made the final decision to invade Ukraine “in the coming week, in the coming days.”

Hayda, born in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village neighborhood, grew up in a Ukrainian household with strong ties to his heritage. His parents were second-generation Ukrainians, but he recalls not learning to speak English until grade school because his parents wanted to teach him to speak Ukrainian.

Hayda graduated from DePaul in 2015 with a bachelor’s degree majoring in digital cinema production. After being involved in several journalism projects and covering the 2012 NATO summit protests, he decided to double major, adding journalism to his repertoire.

“It increasingly became clear that instead of narrative films, narrative documentaries — Ukraine doesn’t need just more stories,” he said. “Ukraine needs more truth and more coverage.”

Hayda, whose father was a priest in the Ukrainian Catholic church, said his family often moved around and lived “wherever the church needed us.” He is now continuing the 400-year lineage of priests in his family, completing his seminary with the Ukrainian Diocese of Chicago.

Hayda and Summer, 27, got married last September before traveling to their new home in Ukraine and staying there until December. When they left Ukraine to visit Chicago for Christmas break, they did not know they would not be able to return.

Over the last two months, Hayda has been battling guilt about not being in Ukraine, stating that he could go today, but would be putting a lot at risk if he did. Traveling to the country would mean losing many of his benefits, such as his life and health insurance coverage, and receiving no consular services from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv.

“Which makes me feel really bad because there’s 45 million people living in Ukraine who can’t leave,” he said. “I am kind of in a little predicament in that regard because I want to be with them. I think I should be with them, serving them in a moment of great fear and provocation and psychological manipulation.”

The church and people who are committed to the truth, like journalists, should be there, Hayda said.

The U.S. State Department travel advisory for Ukraine, which lists the country at a Level 4 restriction, states that the Department of State has suspended consular services at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv as of Feb. 13. The U.S. government will not be able to evacuate U.S. citizens in the event of Russian military action anywhere in Ukraine.

Hayda says he will only permanently return to Ukraine if all Russian troops leave Ukrainian borders and/or a diplomatic solution is reached.

Because Russia doesn’t want to recognize Ukraine as a sovereign nation, he said, he doesn’t believe a solution will be reached.

Yale historian Timothy Snyder wrote in the Washington Post that Putin promotes the idea that Ukraine historically and rightfully belongs to Russia.

“Whether Ukraine is a nation or not is a question for Ukrainians today, not for imaginary Russians in an imaginary past,” Snyder wrote. “In Putin’s presentation, though, the West is to blame when Ukrainians don’t answer the question the way he would like. He seems to believe that Ukrainians would share his view about ‘historical unity,’ if only the West would get out of the way.”

Reports have shown that Ukrainian Americans’ feelings about the crisis have generally been unstable — many feeling hopeful, fearful and helpless.

Chicago has one of the largest populations of Ukrainians in the U.S. Roughly 10,000 residents live in the city’s Ukrainian Village neighborhood.

Oksana Adaskavych, a Ukrainian Village resident, feels helpless about assisting her family in Ukraine.

“We just have to wait,” she said. “What else can we do? Maybe everything will be OK, I think everything will be OK.”

Chicago’s Committee on Health and Human Relations responded to the Russia-Ukraine crisis by approving a resolution that declared the city’s support for the “independence, sovereignty and territorial independence of Ukraine.”

“Some may ask, ‘Why this administration? Why is the city taking an official stance?’ And the reality is that we are a global community and we have seen, time and time again, how turmoil in faraway places impacts all of us,” Nubia Willman, director of the city’s Office of New Americans, said, according to Block Club Chicago.

“This resolution isn’t just about those currently living in Ukraine,” Willman said. “It is about showing our own communities that we stand united with them… [Chicago] is proud to be the home of a vibrant and strong Ukrainian community.”

Unsure of what to anticipate, Hayda does hope to return to at least tie up loose ends.

“If the U.S., for example, is unwilling to provide the services that they’re supposed to, constitutionally, to U.S. citizens, at the very least, I hope to go get my things, say my goodbyes, and wait somewhere back,” Hayda said.