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Houston is home to over 4,000 people with ties to Ukraine – and like their compatriots back home more than 6,000 miles away – they nervously wait as to what will be Russian President Vladimir Putin's next move.
And given the White House's assertions that Russia has conducted an invasion, Ukrainians are understandably fearful that a war could break any day now.
President Joe Biden is leading efforts to get Russia to recall its troops stationed at the country's border with Ukraine.
According to Associated Press, orders from Moscow to move the troops into areas under separatist control prompted the U.S. and its allies in Europe to impose sanctions on Russia, with Germany being the first to take initiative by announcing it'll stop the certification of Russia's Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
The daughter of Ukrainian parents who lived in Russia, Nataliya Pashchenko immigrated to the U.S. in 2000.
She still has family, including a disabled sister, in Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, Houston's FOX26 reported.
According to Pashchenko, Russia's purported plans to invade her homeland are rooted in delusion and paranoia.
"Believing that someone wants to kill you because they are afraid you are going to attack them, without any evidence or fact, is impossible," she told FOX26.
A Ukrainian-American by birth, Hannah Uschak-Cruz is an active member of Houston's Ukrainian community.
The director of Ridna Shkola: Ukrainian School of Houston pinpoints the origin of the current crisis to Russia's 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.
"Ukrainians want to live in peace in the land that they earned back in their independence," Uschak-Cruz told FOX26.
In response to those who feel the crisis isn't a cause for alarm, Uschak-Cruz warns that Russia may not stop at just Ukraine should Putin actually go through with an invasion.
"If we don't stop in Ukraine, where else will they go? Where else will Russia try to take over?" she said, according to FOX26.