SUNDAY, MARCH 6 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
war in ukraine
BY MARIA SACCHETTInew york — T he Gatsby Social
Club is a red-walled hideaway in
Brooklyn where young Eastern
European immigrants gather for
mafia-themed role-playing
games over coffee. But after an
urgent appeal posted on social
media last week, the club
morphed into a factory churning
out humanitarian supplies for
Ukraine.
Volunteers skipped work and
ditched classes to pack giant
cardboard boxes with canned to-
matoes and kidney beans, jars of
grape jelly and boxes of latex
gloves. Trucks bearing the blue-
and-yellow Ukrainian flag
whisked them away.
Elsewhere in the city, people
sent flashlights, pain medicine
and baby formula. Others dis-
patched first-aid kits, bulletproof
vests and helmets for civilian
defenders.
“Hundreds of people, they’re
calling me asking what they can
do, what they can bring, how they
can help,” said Natalya, a 26-year-
old Ukrainian immigrant and vol-
unteer at the social club, who
asked to be identified only by her
first name because she fears Rus-
sia will retaliate against her fam-
ily in Ukraine. “There’s nothing
more important than this mo-
ment.”
New York City is home to tens
of thousands of immigrants from
Ukraine, the most of any U.S. city,
and they have watched in horror
as Russian forces bombard their
native country and as deaths and
devastation mount. Some U.S.
residents have already left to fight
alongside Ukrainians, while oth-
ers are proudly donating money
to the army and humanitarian aid
groups online. But they also fear
the invaders will soon overpower
the nation of 44 million, and they
feel helpless to stop it.
“There’s got to be more that can
be done,” said Orest Temnycky,
59, the son of Ukrainian immi-
grants and chief financial officer
of the Self Reliance New York
Federal Credit Union in the East
Village, an immigrant enclave
that is home to a Ukrainian mu-
seum, restaurants and bars. He
made the sign of the cross as he
passed a sidewalk memorial out-
side St. George Ukrainian Catho-
lic Church, where a sign says
“pray for Ukraine.”
“We are watching in slow mo-
tion the murder of thousands of
people,” Temnycky said as Rus-
sian President Vladimir Putin’s
forces continued their assault on
several cities in Ukraine. “I don’t
see how he is going to stop.”
More than 60,000 Ukrainian
immigrants reside in New York
City, according to census data,
among nearly 355,000 nation-
wide, with significant numbers in
California, Pennsylvania, New
Jersey, Florida, Washington state
and Illinois.
They are part of a much larger
group of 1 million people of
Ukrainian descent, mostly
U.S.-born citizens who speak only
English. Some families left long
before the Soviet Union dissolved
in 1991, and others after Ukraine
overwhelmingly voted for inde-
pendence that year. They are
computer programmers, babysit-
ters, nurses — and even a New
York City councilwoman, Inna
Vernikov, a supporter of former
president Donald Trump who
won applause from her mostly
Democratic colleagues last
month for an impassioned speech
against the invasion.
For many, the ties to their
homeland remain tight.
Marina Shepelsky, 45, a Ukrai-
nian-born lawyer in Brooklyn,
said her fiance is a Soviet Jew who
escaped persecution as a child
and has flatly refused to return.
Her family left Ukraine, fearing
antisemitism, when she was 12,
but her friends are there and her
grandparents are buried there.
And she believes the country had
changed: President Volodymyr
Zelensky is Jewish.
“He keeps asking me, ‘Why are
you so upset? We are fine here in
America,’” Shepelsky said, her
voice catching as she clicked
through photos of her 2012 trip
home, where she visited historic
sites in Kyiv, sampled dumplings
with cherries and sour cream,
and strolled through Odessa, on
the Black Sea.
“I keep watching the news and
crying. This is my country,” she
said. “You can’t take it out of me.”
The invasion upended her of-
fice in Brooklyn. Three remote
staffers were in Ukraine; one fled
to neighboring Slovakia, and the
rest are in hiding. Another staffer
is in Russia but cannot get her
wages because U.S. sanctions
shut down the money transfers.
More than 7,000 immigrants
and refugees have called and mes-
saged her office for help since the
invasion began, some from the
United States and some from
Eastern Europe. One client in
Ukraine found herself stuck there
when her husband, a U.S. perma-
nent resident, was conscripted
into the army to fight the Rus-
sians. He had been waiting for her
to get a visa to join him in the
United States.
“The last few days have been
insane,” said Shepelsky, who has
been recording question-and-an-
swer videos that people can
watch online. “Nonstop, people
are writing. They are asking me
what to do.”
At a courier service nearby,
Nelya and Ihor Andrusiv called
customers to tell them to pick up
packages to Russia because they
cannot be delivered during the
war. In between calls, they
checked on Nelya’s younger sister,
Mariya, who was hiding in a
basement in the city of Kharkiv
with her husband and 7-year-old
daughter. The family had lost
electricity and had some milk and
bread, her sister told her on their
most recent call.
“I hope it’s not the last one,”
Nelya Andrusiv said, her voice
cracking.
Immigrants said they felt
buoyed by the outpouring of sup-
port last week in New York. An
amusement-park ride on Coney
Island glowed with the blue-and-
yellow colors of the Ukrainian
flag, lines stretched outside
Ukrainian restaurants for
borscht and meatballs in the East
Village and the Metropolitan Op-
era gave a rousing rendition of
the Ukrainian national anthem
and severed ties with artists who
back Putin.
But many fear that attention
will fade as the conflict drags on.
At Sly Fox, a dive bar in a
fast-gentrifying part of the East
Village known as the “Ukrainian
Village,” the bartender switched
off the loud music Tuesday night
to listen to President Biden’s State
of the Union address. As Biden
blasted the invasion, a table of
revelers drowned him out.
“Yo u guys, this is a Ukrainian
pub,” a customer rebuked them.
“There are people who are trying
to listen.”
But in neighborhoods where
more Russians and Ukrainians
live together, many immigrants
are worried about people in both
countries. New York is home to
similar numbers of immigrants
from both countries, and they
share social media sites, grocery
stores and restaurants. Many
Russian immigrants oppose the
invasion.
“It’s not right,” Alex Saxon, 64,
an immigrant who fled the Soviet
Union decades ago, said as he
strolled on Brighton Beach with
his wife, Anna. He said the attacks
reminded him of when the Soviet
Union forced him to join the army
and fight in Afghanistan. “We got
no choice in that time, and actual-
ly people over there now, got the
same thing. It doesn’t matter
what side you are... the big guys
decide. They just push you to do
stuff.”
“I love Russian people. This is
not about them. This is about the
politics,” said Oleg Kostyuk, 31, a
medical lab salesman and U.S.
citizen originally from Ukraine,
who is married to an immigrant
from Russia.
But some tensions are emerg-
ing among the groups as the war
intensifies.
Angel Carr, a 31-year-old busk-
er, played a haunting rendition of
the Ukrainian national anthem
on his cherry-red electric guitar
on Brighton Beach one night last
week, one of many national an-
thems he taught himself to charm
residents in this immigrant city.
But he has stripped the Russian
Federation’s anthem from his rep-
ertoire.
“I’ve had Ukrainians come up
to me and be super angry,” he
said.
Levan Chkhikvadze, 44, owner
of a 24-hour tire shop in Brook-
lyn’s Sheepshead Bay, ordered a
pair of giant antiwar posters fea-
turing Putin’s face and the Rus-
sian word for “d--khead.” He is
from Georgia, but his wife is from
Ukraine, and she cannot stop
crying.
He hung the posters facing
busy Coney Island Avenue. But by
Thursday morning, one had been
torn away. Security camera foot-
age shows a pale figure, cloaked
in black, their face concealed by a
black and white umbrella, snatch
the poster at 4 a.m. and hurry
away.
“Someone took it off in the
nighttime,” Chkhikvadze said. “I
knew some are not going to like it,
too many people support Putin
unfortunately. They’re quiet, but
they do.”
As soon as he saw the damage,
he ordered more signs.Sasha Maslov in New York
contributed to this report.New York residents
mobilize to send support
In a city with more Ukrainian immigrants than anywhere
in the United States, many fear for the future of their native countryPHOTOS BY SASHA MASLOV FOR THE WASHINGTON POST“Hundreds of people, they’re calling me asking what they can do,
what they can bring, how they can help. There’s nothing more
important than this moment.”
Natalya, Ukrainian immigrant and volunteer at the Gatsby Social ClubFROM TOP: Ihor and Nelya A ndrusiv, who operate a courier office in Brooklyn, have had to tell
customers to retrieve their packages bound for Russia because they cannot be delivered during the
war. Volunteers prepare aid packages to be sent to Ukraine. Angel Carr, 31, plays the Ukrainian
national anthem at Brighton Beach. He has had to remove the Russian anthem from his repertoire.