Minnesotans with Ukrainian ties dismayed by hearings
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Musician Peter Ostroushko has been watching the congressional impeachment hearings and doesn’t like what he’s seeing.
“Ukraine is getting slam-dunked right now. And that really bothers me.”
Born in Minnesota soon after his Ukrainian parents emigrated to the United States, Ostroushko, 66, said his parents instilled in him an unshaking affinity to the ancestral homeland.
“They wanted their kids to love the Ukraine as much as they did,” he said. “So this current situation just makes me so mad.”
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Ostroushko and a multigenerational room full of Minnesotans of Ukrainian descent came together Wednesday night for an event ahead of the upcoming Holodomor Remembrance Day. They were dedicating an oral history project featuring survivors and relatives of those impacted by a 1930s famine in Ukraine that killed millions. Many historians blame the regime of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin for actions that exacerbated the catastrophe.
“At a time in which Ukraine is again in the news, we are reminded how important it is how we as Ukrainians, Ukrainian Americans, Ukrainians here in Minnesota tell our stories to the world,” said photographer and musician Stefan Iwaskewycz, 45, at the Minneapolis gathering.
His reference to current affairs wasn’t meant to put the Holodomor and impeachment on an equal plane. But these days, Iwaskewycz worries about how Ukraine has been portrayed during hours upon hours of televised hearings into President Trump’s dealings with the eastern European country.
“What is being remembered is that Ukraine is a hotbed of corruption rather than Ukraine as a hotbed of struggle against corruption, especially corruption that’s backed by governments in the Kremlin,” he said, choosing to keep to himself his personal opinion about whether he wants Trump impeached.
At least 17,000 Ukrainian Americans live in Minnesota, according to census estimates. Many families settled in northeast Minneapolis in the 1940s and 1950s. It has been a closely knit community through Ukrainian churches, schools, choirs and other cultural guilds.
“Our life when we were growing up as kids was to be part of that community. We danced. We had to ‘date Ukrainians,’” said retiree Luba Lewytzkyj, 69, who lives four-and-a-half blocks from the house where she was raised.
She has watched a fair amount of the House hearings, sometimes while on the treadmill at the gym. She admitted it’s been difficult.
“To finally see Ukraine in the limelight of the press and the media — only to see it in this particular instance or this particular way rather than seeing Ukraine as the beautiful culture and country that it is,” she said.
Lewytzkyj isn’t viewing the hearings through a Republican versus Democrat prism. It’s unfortunate that Ukraine’s leaders had to entertain requests for investigations their U.S. counterparts wanted in order to free up vital security assistance, she said.
“I think the Ukrainian government, the new president was put into a no-win situation,” she said.
Human resources consultant Natalia Lysyj Rieland, 57, discusses the impeachment saga over lunches and when she's with friends.
“I watch. I read. I talk. I listen. All of the above. I’m not obsessed by it,” Rieland said. “I keep a finger on the pulse of it.”
But Rieland said she’s getting fatigued by it all. She’s clear about where she places blame — on Trump and his allies.
“It’s not a Ukrainian scandal,” she said. “I view it as a very powerful man who took advantage or tried to take advantage of a vulnerable country that has been fighting a war on its eastern front against another aggressor. I just view it as a real abuse of power.”
Rieland visited Ukraine in April, the latest of a half-dozen trips she’s made there to connect with her parents’ native country.
She said she wears her Ukrainian pride openly. Here’s what she wants people to know about the place.
“Kyiv as a city stands up to any European capital in terms of its offerings of culture and vibrant restaurants and fun nightlife and great sports and a culture of a people that are giving and very open to learning and interacting with company that comes to see them.”
Correction (Nov. 23, 2019): A previous version of this story incorrectly spelled Luba Lewytzkyj's name.