Are you watching Ukraine defend democracy? Are we doing enough to protect our own?

When did you first feel the leaden weight of Ukraine’s fight to preserve its democracy?

For me, it was the women of Kharkiv. That video of them learning how to use military-style rifles.

Fifty-five-year-old Viktoria Balesina, with her purple hair and Fair Isle-style sweater, vowing never again to speak her native Russian. Fifty-year-old Svetlana Putilina, insisting that if the government provides the weapons, “we will take them and defend our city.” That magazine of ammo tucked into the waistband of an unidentified young woman’s yoga pants.

Or maybe it was the women in Khmelnytskyi, singing as they wove camouflage nets from strips of fabric. The single-word message painted on the nearby wall: Unbreakable.

These women. Once you see them, you cannot forget them.

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Right now, parents are hovering in hospital basements with their children who have cancer, some of them donating their own blood to keep their kids alive. In Lviv, where sirens wail their bomb warnings every few hours, medical staff have tried to turn safety into a game for their young patients. Run as fast as you can to the “dungeon,” they tell the children. The ones hooked up to oxygen must remain behind.

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And look what has happened in Russia. Photo after photo of protesters filling the streets in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk. People who do not live in a democracy, who have none of our First Amendment protections, risking their freedom and possibly their lives to oppose a deranged leader’s war. I keep returning to the photo of calm, defiant journalist Sofya Rusova, standing outside the Kremlin, clutching her sign: “War with Ukraine is Russia’s disgrace.”

It is impossible, I find, to witness all this humanity in Ukraine and ignore a gnawing uneasiness about our own caretaking of democracy.

One does not equal the other. Violent insurgents attacked our U.S. Capitol, but Ukrainians’ entire homeland is under siege. My friends and my students, we talk about this: How can we not have this conversation about what it takes to protect our democracy? How do we not wonder out loud how this deeply divided country would respond? We couldn’t even unite about a vaccine.

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I see great-grandmother Valentina Constatinovska, her face framed by a cloud of white hair as she lies on the ground, training with an AK-47, and I cannot stomach another video clip of a grown man in America too cowardly to wear a mask. American parents are bullying school boards to shield their children from reading books that make their kids “uncomfortable” as families in Ukraine split apart so that fathers may fight.

Let us not, in this moment, entrench ourselves in such despair. Most Americans are better than this. They are donating to charities set up to help Ukrainians who stay, and those who must flee. They are demanding that their elected officials stand strong against Russia. Across social media, Americans are showing support by sharing images of the Ukraine flag and its national blossom, the sunflower.

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It is easy work to mock such gestures as symbolic and pointless, but I am mindful of the advice of Jane Goodall, the renowned conservationist. In a discussion at Tufts University last year, she addressed the issue of activism.

“The saying, ‘Think globally, act locally’ – turn it around,” she said. “Think locally, and then you have the courage to act globally. If you only think globally to start with, you won't have the energy to act.”

One step leads to another, and to another, and to another. We walk until we run and, perhaps, we learn to fly.

So many victims of Putin's war

On Sunday, NPR’s Tim Mak tweeted this: “As part of the effort to stop the war, Ukraine has set up a hotline for Russian women concerned about their sons/husbands/boyfriends etc. It’s the ‘Come Back from Ukraine Alive’ hotline, said an advisor to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine”

Mak added that “five women in Kyiv have received 700 calls from Russian mothers ‘who are horrified’ and they missed several thousand more calls.”

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Women supporting women, still. After I read this, I heard the sung prayer of Jean Valjean in "Les Miserables." He pleads with God to spare the life of young Marius, even if it means he must die.

There will be so many victims of Vladimir Putin’s war.

Hope is not a plan: But it's all I have for the Ukraine I hold in my heart

Since the invasion started nearly a week ago, Russia has killed at least 16 children in Ukraine. On Tuesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the European Parliament, from his bunker: “We have a desire to see our children alive. I think it’s a fair one.”

As he spoke, a 40-mile long convoy of Russian tanks and vehicles was making its way to Kyiv.

Connie Schultz is a columnist for USA TODAY. She is a Pulitzer Prize winner whose novel, "The Daughters of Erietown," is a New York Times bestseller. Reach her at CSchultz@usatoday.com or on Twitter: @ConnieSchultz

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ukraine is defending democracy against Russia while we debate masks