Making his first Chicago appearance since the popular uprising that propelled him into the Ukrainian presidency, Viktor Yushchenko told a crowd of local Ukrainians on Monday night that support from the city’s Ukrainian community helped buoy his country’s march toward democracy.
“I am particularly happy that the Ukrainian nation has risen from its knees,” Yushchenko said during his appearance at the Palmer House Hilton, organized by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations.
Yushchenko added, “We also rose from our knees because you were by us.”
Scores of Chicago Ukrainians gathered outside the hotel, unable to get tickets for the appearance, but hoping to catch a glimpse of Yushchenko. Inside the hall, Yushchenko appeared onstage to chants of “Yush-chen-ko! Yush-chen-ko!”–much the way thousands of demonstrators in Kiev greeted him during the turmoil that preceded his ascent to power.
Yushchenko is on a three-day visit to the United States. His victory came after massive rallies in Kiev last winter against his Kremlin-backed opponent’s initial victory, which later was overturned by Ukraine’s supreme court on charges of widespread election fraud.
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Yushchenko’s brief visit in Chicago will include a Tuesday breakfast with Chicago business executives. His wife, Kateryna Chumachenko Yushchenko, will speak Tuesday at the University of Chicago, her alma mater.
Ukrainians in the city tried desperately to land tickets to the Council on Foreign Relations speech, said John Horodecki, president of Chicago’s Ukrainian American Club.
Catching a glimpse
Olga Collin of Deerfield, a Ukrainian immigrant, showed up at the event but couldn’t get in because she lacked a ticket. She comes from a Russian-speaking area of southern Ukraine, and some of those walking in to hear Yushchenko gave her odd looks when they heard her speaking Russian, she said. Ethnic Russians formed the majority of support for Viktor Yanukovich, Yushchenko’s opponent in the election.
But, she said, “I’m a Russian speaker and I voted for Yushchenko. It was the first time in my life I felt compelled to vote for someone.”
Chicago-area resident Ivanka Gajecky worked as an observer during the election rerun in December, and she found herself identifying with Kateryna Chumachenko Yushchenko, the president’s wife.
“It’s really cool that she’s from Chicago and has the same background,” Gajecky said. “I did the same thing as she did growing up. I had two lives: Monday through Friday going to regular school, and then on the weekend we went to Ukrainian school.”
Some in the crowd wore traditional Ukrainian outfits, and nearly everyone wore orange. The line of people waiting to get in wound through a hall where a choir from St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral School was getting ready to welcome the president. They rehearsed a song from Yushchenko’s campaign.
Since his inauguration Jan. 23, Yushchenko has set his nation of 48 million on a path toward integration with Europe and a strong, strategic partnership with the Bush administration. He is pursuing Ukraine’s membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union and the World Trade Organization.
But he also has sought a balance between forging a pro-West policy and maintaining healthy ties with Russia, which remains Ukraine’s largest trade partner and main energy supplier. His first foreign visit after his inauguration was to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin reciprocated by visiting Kiev last month, signaling a willingness to work with Yushchenko despite Ukraine’s push to integrate with Europe.
Meeting with Bush
Before flying to Chicago, Yushchenko stopped in Washington for a White House lunch with President Bush, who pledged to help Ukraine become a WTO member and voiced support for Ukraine’s membership in NATO.
“There is a way forward in order to become a partner of the United States and other nations in NATO,” Bush said. “We want to help Ukraine get on that path as quickly as possible.
“It is not a given,” Bush added. “There are things that the Ukrainian government must do in order to satisfy the requirements to be considered for NATO. And we want to help. . . . I’m a supporter of the idea of Ukraine becoming a member of NATO.”
Yushchenko will address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday. Bush is asking Congress to appropriate $60 million for the development of Ukraine’s democratic institutions.
Ukraine is among the American allies that have provided military forces in Iraq, with about 1,650 troops stationed there. But Ukraine, like other European nations, is starting to withdraw its forces. For Yushchenko, this withdrawal is a matter of fulfilling a campaign promise to a Ukrainian public that deeply opposed the deployment of troops in Iraq.
“The president made clear to me in my first conversation with him that . . . he campaigned on the idea of bringing some troops out,” Bush said. “He’s fulfilling a campaign pledge–I fully understand that. But he also has said that he’s going to cooperate with the coalition, in terms of further withdrawals, and I appreciate that.”