War in Ukraine: in New York, the “Ukrainian Village” mobilized for the motherland

The hinged doors of the kitchen open like in the saloon. Appears the slender silhouette of Vitalii Desiatchenko, the restaurant manager who returns to the dining room. His faded blue eyes, his dark circles of fatigue and his emaciated face are noticed immediately. “I have lost 5 kilos since the start of the war,” says the 30-year-old, who was far from being overweight before February 24. He remembers the first day of the conflict, six months ago.

“When the Russians attacked, we were stunned, incredulous. Since then, we have been living in a permanent state of stress. For the staff, it’s complicated to manage: our body is here, in the dining room, serving customers, but our spirit is there, in Ukraine, where our parents, families and friends live under the bombs.” Vitalii calls kyiv three times a day juggling the seven hour time difference. “My parents and my 83-year-old grandmother are there. They told me they would never leave unless Russia wins, which no one here is considering,” says the bistro manager Veselka, who has been living in New York for a few years.

In the East Village, not far from Chinatown and Little Italy, Veselka (“rainbow”, in Ukrainian) is what is called an institution. Unpretentious and affordable, the establishment has existed since 1954. Initially a simple sandwich and soup kiosk installed on a sidewalk, the address, open 24 hours a day, quickly becomes a success. Sixty-eight years later, it retains its menu (borscht, pierogi, schnitzel, beef Stroganoff), its schedules and its aura. “In the 1980s, recalls Arthur Zegelbone, a New Yorker artsy, the neighborhood was pretty dilapidated… Around 2 or 3 a.m., when we were drunk, the Veselka borscht seemed exquisite to us, especially in winter,” he adds, a bit nostalgic.

A legendary bistro, the place is also the anchor of the Ukrainian community, very present in Manhattan, especially in this sector of the East Village nicknamed “Ukrainian Village”. Here, on February 24, the mobilization is immediate. “As soon as the news of the invasion became known (at 5 a.m. kyiv time and 10 p.m. New York time), dozens of expatriates spontaneously headed for Times Square to protest, says Dora Chomiak, the president of Razom (Together), an NGO created after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 to support the motherland from abroad.

At midnight, there were already a hundred people, and the next day other demonstrations were organized, notably in front of the Russian consulate.” Meanwhile, in Washington, sunflowers symbolizing Ukraine are planted in front of the Russian Embassy. And in New York, in the early morning, hundreds of yellow and blue flags adorn the brick buildings of the “Ukrainian Village”. They are still there.

“The reaction of the people of the district was extraordinary”, resumes Vitalii, the manager of Veselka. “People would drop by the restaurant to check on us and offer their help.” From February 25, the mayor of New York and the governor of the state arrive at the restaurant to express their solidarity. Spontaneously, collections are organized: military helmets, night vision goggles, tin cans, medicines, toothpaste, baby diapers or even brushes and paint for artists… And donations are pouring in from everywhere. After a few days, they number in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The churches in the neighborhood are transformed into sorting centres. For his part, Veselka launched his initiative “A borscht for Ukraine” in order to support the resistance. Volunteers arrive from all over New York, sometimes giving up their jobs to give of themselves. Some – “I know at least three of them”, testifies Vitalii – leave to enlist in the Ukrainian army. A trip sometimes without return. “Everyone here knows someone who was killed by shelling or in combat,” said Oksana, a Veselka customer from Kherson, where her cousin died at the front. “Everyone does what they can, but no one stands idly by,” proudly adds 30-year-old Tanya Shir, a graphic designer who, from the start of the conflict, created T-shirts in national colors to sell and finance the purchase of tourniquets and anticoagulants.

“Our asset is that we have been configured to support our country since 2014”, continues Dora Chomiak, the president of Razom, which relies on 45 permanent workers and more than 100,000 donors across North America. which have already financed $39 million worth of medical equipment. “We just had to press a button to put us in working order”, she congratulates herself before recalling that her NGO already had an illustrious predecessor, the Ukrainian National Association, founded in 1894 in Pennsylvania.

The history of Ukrainians in the New World dates back to the end of the 19th century, when the first migrants settled in the mining towns of this state on the east coast, the atmosphere of which can be perceived in Journey to the End of Hell (1978, Michael Cimino), with Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep, which features a Ukrainian-American community. The Russian Revolution brought a second wave of migrants to the United States, followed by a third after World War II. But the largest influx dates back to the breakup of the Soviet Union and Ukraine’s independence in 1991.

More recently, the community has been enriched by a fifth wave thanks to geeks recruited by Alphabet (Google), Meta (Facebook, Instagram), Apple or even Microsoft. With more than 1 million Ukrainian-Americans, the diaspora represents 0.3% of the population. This is a little less than that of Canada which, with 1.4 million people, represents more than 5% of the inhabitants, with records at 7% in the cities of Vancouver or Edmonton.

This explains it: many American celebrities have ancestors from kyiv, Lviv or Odessa. Among them: Leonardo DiCaprio, Dustin Hoffman, Bob Dylan, the co-founder of PayPal Max Levchin, the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg or the late jazzmen Stan Getz and Bill Evans. Ukrainian-Americans have even been represented in the Washington Congress since the election of Victoria Spartz less than two years ago. Born in 1978 in the vicinity of kyiv, this energetic blonde quadra was first a member of parliament in Indiana before being elected to the House of Representatives. Since the invasion of her country, here she is bombarded expert of the conflict on the television channels.

“The truth is that previously I was not very keen on international issues”, admits this Republican until then mainly concerned with health and immigration issues. “But I adapt. Having grown up in a country under Soviet domination, I have the advantage of understanding the particularities of local mentalities”, adds the elected official to the flow of machine guns who receives at her office, in an annex of the Capitol. . “It’s incredible, she is surprised, how the Ukrainians have evolved since I left twenty years ago. It must be said that they have been fighting for freedom for three decades, both against Russian influence and against the corruption of their own leaders. In the end, they broke away from the Russians. Their aspiration for democracy is too strong: they have switched to the West forever”, adds the one who recently found herself in the heart of a controversy, in kyiv, for having criticized Zelensky’s chief of staff.

Set in front of the entrance to the Ukrainian East Village Restaurant, another historic restaurant, just next to Veselka, where she sells her yellow and blue T-shirts, graphic designer Tanya Shir watches news from the war on her phone . “Every day of the dead…”, she sighs. Does she harbor a hatred against Vladimir Putin? His answer, accompanied by a sad smile, fuses: “I can’t even hate the Russians, because for that, they would have to have an ounce of humanity. But their behavior is not even human. They can’t even be compared to wild animals. We can’t hate them or understand them. We can only fight them.”

This article is from our special issue “We Ukrainians”on newsstands August 24, in partnership with BFMTV.