In my career as a journalist there have been only a handful of times when personal history converged with the task at hand.

In 2014, I was visiting my grandparents in Southern Russia as things were escalating in Ukraine's Eastern region. I took a bus across the Russian-Ukrainian border to Donetsk to cover Ukraine’s presidential elections for USA Today, as it was already challenging to get into Ukraine by plane. This peaceful and sleepy northern industrial city I remembered visiting as a child was quickly becoming a magnet for international media: many war correspondents known for their reporting from hotspots around the globe were already there.

Over the course of the few days I spent there covering the elections, I witnessed Donetsk's complete descent into a war zone. By then, I was no stranger to harrowing images I witnessed in half a dozen countries before: the unbelievable poverty and children with visible signs of malnutrition in Somalia, the bold promise and a swift descent into chaos in Egypt following its revolution. Until that moment the war still registered as something far away, and then it hit so close to where I was from. 

As many Ukrainians would tell you, they’ve been in a state of war with Russia ever since.

As Vladimir Putin’s army moved to invade all of Ukraine earlier this month, memories of this surreal reporting experience in Donetsk came flooding back. I remembered how quickly peaceful neighborhoods can turn into partisan encampments or rubble, how your sense of safety or whom to trust can change in seconds, and how your movement gets immediately restricted by curfews and no-go zones. 

This past week, I was frankly surprised how much coverage and sympathy Ukraine's plight was receiving abroad: millions of dollars raised in Bitcoin and ethereum, thousands of people marching against Russia's invasion across European cities and beyond, even within Russia itself, and Elon Musk enabling Starlink service for Ukraine at the request of the Digital Transformation Minister. 

What is happening in Ukraine today is personal for me and millions of people with ties to the region, not just Ukraine. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and other neighboring states are watching the conflict intently: If Putin can invade Ukraine and get away with it, why not their country? 

But it's also resonating with so many people because the Ukrainian conflict is broader than one country or even one region and is intertwined with the future of democracy. For so long, U.S. foreign policy had an air of moral superiority, a stated mission of safeguarding democracies around the world. This time, the U.S. sent a clear, consistent message to Putin that the US troops would not get involved. Many European nations are also hesitant to get involved militarily-- otherwise, many argue, Ukraine would already be a part of NATO.

So instead we have a small democratic nation leading the biggest fight against a non-democratic aggressor in decades, a fight that will determine what kind of world and global order we live in for decades to come. The Ukrainians are not just fighting for themselves, they are fighting for all of us.

And instead of John Winthrop's vision of City Upon a Hill for America to be a shining beacon of democratic principles for the rest of the world, all eyes are now on Ukraine to hold off the onslaught of authoritarianism, kleptocracy and corruption -- and hopefully inspire the rest of the world to do the same. 

If Ukraine can succeed despite its odds, perhaps we can do it too.