Ukrainians march in S.F. on anniversary of invasion
As scenes of the first day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine unfolded on television last February, Saratoga resident Nora Kulchycky Mason called her nephew, then a retired major in the Ukrainian army.
“It will be over soon,” he reassured her, espousing a belief then shared by many.
But on Saturday, Mason stood beside San Francisco’s Ferry Building commemorating the first anniversary of the deadly invasion few predicted would last this long. Wrapped in a blue and yellow scarf — the colors of her homeland — Mason joined nearly a thousand other mourners who had gathered to mark the anniversary with a succession of anguished speeches and songs, followed by a march to Pier 39.
The crowd, awash in blue and yellow flags, sang the Ukrainian national anthem. They prayed for the victims of the war and cried out for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be charged with war crimes, chants that rang out across the plaza.
Watching the tributes from the edge of the boisterous crowd, Mason recalled her own escape as a refugee during World War II more than seven decades ago, when her family fled its home in Ukraine only to be captured and sent to a German slave labor camp. Thinking of the carnage now playing out in her country, she said she is haunted by the images of evacuees that remind her so much of her own journey to safety.
“How do you make this rubble a home?” she said, envisioning the end of the war. “What do we have to go back to?”
It is a question that has motivated her to raise money for medical supplies with the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America, a nationwide organization whose members were out in full force Saturday. Like Mason, they were both devastated by the yearlong war and emboldened to help from afar.
Surrounded by giant yellow balloons and girls wearing traditional Ukrainian flower crowns known as vinok, league volunteer Ievgeniia Zlotak said mobilizing support for the war’s victims had helped stave off the grief she knew would inevitably come. For now, Zlotak said, staying busy with fundraising had given her a sense of purpose. The organization has raised more than $2 million in aid so far.
“Once the war is over, then there will be time to sit, to speak, to cry out all of our tears we are holding back at the moment,” Zlotak said. The first anniversary of the invasion provided Ukrainian immigrants and descendents of immigrants the chance to reflect on the losses their country has endured, organizers said. It was an opportunity to share a collective grief and uncertainty about what the coming year may hold.
They waved yellow sunflowers, a beloved Ukrainian symbol, and held aloft signs that read, “Stop bombing my home” and “Stop genocide.” A group of mourners unfurled a giant Ukrainian flag, and the march to Pier 39 began.
A woman who identified herself only as Natalia stood with her daughter watching the crowds disperse. Holding back tears, she said she sometimes envisioned bombs falling on her home in San Carlos — a way to imagine what the constant threat of annihilation must feel like for her twin brother in Kyiv.
“It is an endless nightmare,” she said. “It is just terrifying.”
As the plaza emptied, merchants selling little flags wrapped up their wares. Children dressed in blue and yellow clambered up the pillars where the speakers had stood. On the loudspeakers, a traditional hymn rang out, reverberating off the Ferry Building’s arched windows: “Our beautiful Ukraine will rise, and we will rise also.”