CONFLICT IN UKRAINE ERUPTED IN SPRING OF 2014

Eight years ago, local Ukrainians watched news from abroad as Russia mobilized its troops to seize control of the Crimean peninsula and occupy the eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk ahead of a presidential election billed as the most important since independence.

Since it became independent in the 1991 Soviet collapse, Ukraine had been a point of friction between Russia and the West. In early 2014, a bloody crackdown on street protests against Russian influence in Ukraine led to the ouster of pro-russian President Viktor Yanukovich. Petro Poroshenko, a more pro-european leader, took office in June 2014. Poroshenko was succeeded by Volodymyr Zelenskyy in May 2019.

From The San Diego Union-tribune, March 6, 2014:

UKRAINIANS IN SAN DIEGO EXPERIENCE OLD FEARS, NEW HOPE

Vladimir Shekhtman was born in Russia and moved to Ukraine when he was 6. He speaks both Russian and Ukrainian f luently. In San Diego, where he lives now, he speaks freely — in English — about his dislike for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s use of force in Ukraine and his own wishes for Crimea.

“I hope it’s going to be resolved without a war,” Shekhtman said. “After the U.S. and the whole of Europe showed Russia that they’re really ready to help Ukraine’s people, I think Russia is going to step back. That’s my wish.”

As San Diego’s Ukrainians follow the situation in their homeland more than 6,000 miles away, they’re filled with worries and hope.

“I would say the pulse of our community is one of fear. Fear of a return to the oppressive regime that they suffered under during the Soviet era,” said Father James Bankston, pastor of St. John the Baptizer Ukrainian Catholic Church in La Mesa. “Loss of independence, loss of autonomy. … We hope and pray that calmness prevails and that the rule of law is re-established.”

These protests come after years of political turmoil in Ukraine, perceived as being between pro-western and pro-soviet factions. The nation of 44.5 million gained independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991. Its Orange Revolution in 2004 prefaced the current strife.

Valentyna Simpson, an artist who immigrated to the U.S. in 2000 and now lives in Oceanside, said she is confident that Ukraine will “survive” and that pro-democracy protests that started in Kiev’s Maidan Square in November will spread to Russia.

“I think the ending will be amazing. Ukraine will shine,” Simpson said. “The moment (Putin) came to Ukraine, he was gone from history. He will last, maybe, a year. Then he will be gone, period. … Russia will have hundreds of Maidan, in each city.”

A cluster of Ukrainians arrived in San Diego after World War II, fleeing Stalinist Russia. After the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, another wave arrived. The roughly 6,000 Ukrainian-americans in San Diego are not clustered in any particular neighborhoods, added Askold Haywas, a Marine Corps veteran from Ukraine who has lived in the United States for more than five decades.

Haywas said Putin’s stated reasons for using force — to protect from persecution the ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in Crimea and eastern Ukraine — are “phony baloney.”

National identity isn’t about language, he added. “Are we supposed to take over England and New Zealand and Australia because they speak English?”

San Diego County had 8,400 bilingual or monolingual Russian speakers in 2011, according to county demographic data.

Elena Soltanovskaya is one of them. She left St. Petersburg, in western Russia, in 1995. She remembers happy vacations in Crimea. “It’s a very beautiful, peaceful part,” she said. “It became Ukraine not long ago.” The Soviet Union made Crimea part of Ukraine in 1954.

She said the region’s Russian population, cultural impact and investment are significant, and she opposes U.S. involvement in a conflict she considers overplayed in the U.S. media.

One benefit to the situation, Haywas noted, is increased awareness about Ukraine.

“We’re extra thankful to the media, because the typical American is still not sure, what is this thing, this Ukraine?” Haywas said.