Like many Californians with family in Ukraine, the last three weeks of Russia’s invasion of the country have been agonizing.

For Anya Komisaryk, it has been a nightmare. She’s spent the last few weeks doing her best to keep tabs on her family members who are a world away.

“Just the hopelessness of every conversation, that’s what hurts the most,” Komisaryk told KTLA about her efforts to keep in touch with her family members in the war zone.

Anya came to the United States with her mother when she was 7 years old. The rest of her family stayed in Kyiv.

Anya’s been doing her best to check in on them every day. She says her grandmother Larissa, at first, didn’t realize the gravity of the situation playing out in her hometown.

“It was five in the morning and I call my babushka — my grandmother — and she answered all sleepy,” Komisaryk said. Anya was watching on TV from her home in California as missile alerts rang throughout her grandmother’s city.

She told her grandmother about the missile strikes happening in Kyiv. At first, she didn’t believe it.

“She’s like, ‘No, that’s all talk,'” Komisaryk said.

Larissa turned on her radio and Komisaryk said she could hear the emergency alert system blaring.

Since then, Larissa has fled her home and is now sharing a single room with four other people near the Romanian border.

Komisaryk said her grandmother is distressed and losing weight.

“The real danger is her medications. She has a thyroid issue and if she doesn’t take those she will die and all the pharmacies are shut down so there’s nothing available,” Komisaryk said.

In the weeks since Larissa fled her home, Russian attacks have also reached other members of Komisaryk’s family.

On Tuesday, an apartment building where her other grandmother lived was damaged and caught fire.

“That’s when my heart drops, because Kyiv is a very big city and now it’s in my neighborhood,” Komisaryk said.

Luckily, her grandmother wasn’t home at the time.

Komisaryk also said one of her cousins is on the front lines of the conflict. He wasn’t part of the active military, but conscripted once the fighting began.

He’s now fighting on the same street where he grew up. Anya said she hasn’t heard from him in three days.

With no signs of of violence stopping, and with Russian attacks now hitting the western city of Lviv for the first time, Anya said she doesn’t know what else to do and hopes the rest of the world steps up to do more.

“We don’t need anymore prayers,” Komisaryk said. “We need planes.”