(NewsNation Now) — Ukraine’s president signed a decree temporarily lifting the visa needed for foreign volunteers willing to join in the fight against Russia.

While hundreds of thousands of refugees are leaving Ukraine amid Russia’s attack, some men and women are returning home from across Europe to help Ukrainians defend themselves. 

This group includes everyday people. Business owners, teachers and lawyers are joining defense battalions to defend Ukraine’s independence.

“It’s truly a nationwide effort,” said Andrij Dobriansky, director of communications for the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), during an appearance on “Morning in America”.

“People are making the trek to the border,” Dobriansky said. “Sometimes it’s just to make sure the wife or child or the husband and a child of a soldier is safe,” he said.

According to Dobriansky, citizens will leave bombed-out parts of cities and “they’ll go to another town and they’ll immediately get to work on packing humanitarian aid packets, anything they can to get in to fight.”

Many of these volunteers are not trained to take up arms and take on the responsibility despite the risk.

“If a tank came into your hometown, and people said, ‘this is our town, now you leave,’ I wonder what all of our perspective would be,” Dobriansky said.

As a 40-mile convoy of hundreds of Russian tanks and other vehicles advance on Kyiv, “what Ukrainians are saying — and they said this from the very beginning — when everybody told them to give up, don’t fight this, maybe there’s some kind of compromise. They said they are going to fight for every square inch of their land,” Dobriansky said. “It’s their right to do that.”

Dobriansky said humanitarian supplies such as blood, bandages and gauze are very much in need right now.

“I can tell you that the embassy and the four consulates here in the United States have been getting overwhelmed with phone calls,” he said. “So this is something that Americans have been calling, and asking how they can participate, how they can help their fellow Ukrainians.”

Dobriansky said that’s the way we can all stand up for democracy and stop Putin in his tracks right now because … this is not going to be the last country.”

Watch the full interview with Andrij Dobriansky in the video player at the top of the page.