Luda wonders how she will survive when her tourist visa runs out this summer and she must leave her daughter in the Atlanta area for her home in Donetsk, the site of fierce fighting between Ukrainian troops and Russian-backed separatists.
“I feel grateful that my daughter’s family pushed me to come here in May because I didn’t want to at that time,” Luda, who asked that her full name not be used to protect relatives in Donetsk, said in Russian. Many of Luda’s close relatives remain in Donetsk. “I want to go back home, but I am very scared.”
Luda is staying in Decatur with her daughter Karyna, one of 12,738 Georgia residents who claim Ukrainian ancestry, U.S. Census Bureau estimates show. Nearly 1 million live across the U.S. The yearlong fighting in Ukraine — which has claimed more than 6,000 lives and displaced more than 1.2 million people — has set these Ukrainian-Americans on edge and even alienated some from friends and relatives.
Many in Georgia are raising funds for humanitarian efforts in their native country. Others led a delegation of Ukrainian law enforcement officials and academics on a tour Monday of Georgia’s state Capitol, where they learned about this nation’s legal system and democratic form of government. Ukraine, a nation of 44.2 million people that gained its independence after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, is striving to root out corruption and run a competent government.
A retired government worker, Luda has watched from afar as parts of her city have been reduced to rubble, including its once grand airport. The Ukrainian government cut off her pension after activists aligned with Russia took control of the region and declared its sovereignty. Schools and banks have shut down. Fighting persists there despite a peace agreement reached in February.
The hostilities started in 2013 after then-President Viktor Yanukovych shelved a political and trade agreement with the European Union in favor of closer economic ties with Russia. That prompted protests in Kiev and then a violent government crackdown. Yanukovych fled, eventually surfacing in Russia. In March of 2014, Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. Fighting has raged in eastern Ukraine since then. Ukraine and the Obama administration have accused Russia of fueling that violence with military manpower and supplies, a charge the Kremlin denies.
So far, the U.S. government has committed $36.4 million in humanitarian aid to Ukraine, including funding for emergency relief, economic recovery and psychological support services, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. On Friday, about 300 U.S. paratroopers arrived in Ukraine, where they will be training Ukrainian national guardsmen for several weeks. Their arrival drew sharp criticism from Moscow.
Ukrainian-Americans in Georgia are mounting their own efforts to help their homeland. At a Sandy Springs fundraising event in January, for example, Tetiana Lendiel and others raised about $6,000 for the Ukrainian military with Christmas carol performances and food from their native country, including varenyky, or dumplings. They have also sold Ukrainian-themed bumper stickers to pay for bandages for Ukrainian troops. A much bigger fundraising event is in the works for this fall in the Atlanta area.
Lendiel, who came to the U.S. from Ukraine on a student visa in 2011 and married a U.S. citizen the following year, resides in Atlanta. She still has family in Ukraine.
“The economic situation is deteriorating every day,” said Lendiel, a member of the Georgia branch of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, a nonprofit that represents ethnic Ukrainians in the U.S. “People are becoming poorer and poorer and they don’t see an end to it. … This uncertainty scares them a lot.”
Maksim Kostyrny, who came to the U.S. from Ukraine in 1996 and now lives near Emory University, also has relatives in Ukraine who are anxious.
“They don’t want this war. They want peace, and they want to be their own country,” said Kostyrny, a tow truck driver. “And everyone is willing to fight for it. But it is not working out too well, obviously.”
Kostyrny complained that the Russian news media is spreading “lies” and sowing discord about the conflict. He said he used to have a lot of Russian friends before the fighting started. “Now maybe one or two,” he said. Kostyrny hopes the Ukrainian military will be able to get more modern weapons to defend the country.
“It’s sad. We need help,” he said. “It needs to be done as fast as possible.”
Maryana Harrelson, a native of Ukraine living in Lithia Springs, opposes the fighting and wants it to end.
“If the U.S. can help somehow, I think it should be assisting in making peace there,” said Harrelson, who married a U.S. citizen and came to the U.S. two years ago from Donetsk.
Some of her friends still live in Donetsk, where she owns an apartment. She is letting a friend stay there to keep an eye on her property. Meanwhile, Harrelson is worried about her older brother, who serves in the Ukrainian military. Given the violence in her homeland, Harrelson is grateful she decided to come to the U.S. when she did.
“I was lucky because I can’t imagine what my future would be if I stayed there,” she said. “I like it here, especially now.”
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