Watching a War Half a World Away

Ukrainian Americans cope with horrors from their homeland.

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Hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged U.S. lawmakers Wednesday morning to institute a no-fly zone over Ukraine and send more weapons to stave off Russian attacks, a small crowd of rabbis, Jewish-Americans, and Ukrainian-Americans gathered in front of the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C., to protest the war.

Rabbi Gilah Langner from Arlington, Virginia, approached the mic Wednesday afternoon and spoke of the Fast of Esther, a three-day fast that began Wednesday that celebrates the Jewish people’s liberation from genocide as told in the Book of Esther. “Esther called for it at a time of great personal and communal peril in response to the genocidal plans of a power-hungry, arrogant, and evil official named Haman,” she told the crowd as one rally attendee passed around a poster for others to write down their names alongside their ancestral hometowns in Ukraine. 

“Today we face a modern day Haman,” Langner  said in a reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose soldiers have been killing Ukrainian civilians with impunity since the war broke out late last month. 

The country’s rising death toll is poignant for Darian Diochok, a U.S. veteran of Ukrainian descent whose 52-year-old nephew is serving in the Ukrainian military after two initial failed attempts to volunteer. “The third time they said, ‘We need all the help we can get,’ and they gave him a battalion to command,” Diochok said in an interview.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Good work Audrey. Reading this I realized how emotional the job of a journalist must sometimes be. It’s a profession in which your entire career may involve dispassionately reporting other people’s suffering. That’s hard to take after a while. But vitally necessary. Thank you.

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    Sheila M

    Thank you for this article and for sharing these people's stories.

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    BWG

    Thanks Audrey, good reporting about very sad, dire circumstances.

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    John D. Wright

    I am liking the writing of this article and your reporting of the facts not what is happening in Ukraine. My heart so much goes out to Ukraine. We have no Ukrainians in our church but we too are praying for them.

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    1. Jon D

      In 1985, I traveled to Leningrad, Kyiv and Moscow as part of a 2 month poly sci. trip. After spending 4 days in the cold, overcast, oppressive environment of Leningrad, we flew to Kyiv and were greeted with sunshine and warmth. We went to the beach along the Dnieper River (yes, there is one) and went swimming in its frigid waters. Being the obnoxious Americans that we were, we were all screaming, laughing and having a good time. Someone in our group looked up and there, watching us quietly from a distance, were dozens of Ukrainians, mostly around our same age range. I will never forget the next hour or so of playing frisbee and throwing footballs with some of them. Following our stint in Kyiv, we took the train to Moscow, which was another unforgettable experience. I was a lot most interested in seeing the countryside, with its peasant farmers and their small personal gardens. My heart grieves for those people. I wonder what some of those kids we met are doing now.

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    Chris L

    We have a lovely Ukrainian couple that works at our gym, and they try to avoid watching tv in the lounge since they just break down whenever an update from home occurs. They still have family in Kyiv that has been living in bomb shelters since the outbreak, and they understand that they can lose them at any moment. They're trying to keep it together, but they are getting very obviously emotionally thrashed by this, and thankfully their clients have been overwhelmingly supportive of them.

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