Chris Hartsburg, director of Hockey at the Lake Erie Sports Alliance (LESA), had a busy summer with nearly 40 kids for the participating in the Ukrainian Hockey Camp and Cultural Exchange.

Now he's training a few returners.

"The opportunity presented itself for these young men," Hartsburg said. "Just [to] come back over and take part in a kind of a full season of hockey over here."

Seven Ukrainian players packed their bags and received a warm welcome back to the U.S. for more hockey training and educational opportunities in Erie.

"For us here, obviously, we have three big hockey markets," Hartsburg said.

A pipeline of sorts has already begun, with previous players like Filip Sidor and Dmytro Korzh attending Nichols School in Buffalo, N.Y.

Erie First Christian Academy has also gotten involved with helping players.

"This is a goodwill mission for all of us," Hartsburg said.

And this mission is also about safety. In Kharkiv, Ukraine, a major hockey facility in the hometown of one of the Ukrainian players was destroyed by Russian missiles.

"[The player] was upset," Hartsburg said. "More so, he was angry and just asking, 'Why? Why would they do that?'"

Mercyhurst University's Associate Professor of Intelligence, Dr. Fred Hoffman, knows exactly why.

"The Russian military has got a different strategy, and they willfully target civilian locations to include athletic facilities," Hoffman said. "The bottom line is we have to look at it as Americans thinking that the way they conduct warfare is very different than the way we do."

With over 30 years experience in the military and Human Intelligence, Hoffman explains the thinking behind these intentional targets.

"They're targeting not the troops in the field," Hoffman said. "They're trying to demoralize the population to try to kill a bunch of civilians."