MAURICE CREEK RIDES in the backseat of a car on Monday morning and stares at the turmoil all around as the driver heads to the border: Barricades. Sandbags. Tanks. Soldiers.
The car inches through the streets of Mykolaiv, a small city in Southern Ukraine that he has called home for the past two months. The American basketball player is terrified of being spotted by the Russian soldiers. Don’t get caught. Don’t get caught, he repeats to himself.
He practices the two phrases he had memorized in Ukrainian and Russian.
Don’t shoot. I am American.
The last four days of his life appear in images. Waking up to sirens. Packing a grocery bag with essentials. Huddling in a bomb shelter. Hearing bombs around him and believing he was about to die in the Russian invasion.
The driver pulls up to a Ukrainian checkpoint, and Creek shudders in his seat. He reaches out the window and hands over his…
