Maria Klimchak experiences waves of guilt because she’s in Chicago and safe while so many of her loved ones — including her 84-year-old mother — face peril and uncertainty in her homeland of Ukraine.
“I am crying all morning,” she said, her voice strained and tense. “But just to cry, it’s not helping. I feel guilty that I am not in Ukraine.”
Klimchak emigrated from Ukraine in 1993, a few years after her motherland gained independence from the former Soviet Union.
Three decades later, the nation’s hard-won sovereignty hangs in the balance.
News broke in Chicago late Wednesday that Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, spurring the largest conventional attack of a European state since World War II.
The next morning, Klimchak was at the Ukrainian National Museum in Chicago, where she works as a curator. She and other staff members clutched their cellphones, awaiting calls and text messages and emails from relatives overseas. The phone in the office was ringing nonstop, with supporters asking how they could help or where they could make donations to be sent to Ukraine.
Many callers of all races and ethnic backgrounds were requesting large blue and yellow Ukrainian flags, to be draped from the windows and balconies of Chicago-area homes in solidarity.
“It is a terrible time for everyone who lives around the world, not only for Ukrainians,” Klimchak said. “Even the moral support, it’s very important at this time.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has essentially argued that Ukraine was always a part of Russia. Yet the exhibits and galleries that Klimchak curates tell a very different story, showcasing centuries of distinctive Ukrainian history, art and culture.
On display are a variety of kylym, intricately woven Ukrainian tapestries, and rushnyky, embroidered ritual cloths. The museum’s collection of more than 10,000 objects includes ancient Bibles and religious icons, as well as a replica of a Carpathian wooden church, built hundreds of years ago with a unique form of carpentry that used no nails or bolts.
Shelves of pysanky, ornately decorated Ukrainian Easter eggs, line a wall. Legend has it that the fate of humanity rests on the survival of these fragile eggs: An evil serpent would be unleashed to “overrun the world if the custom of egg decorating ends,” according to the museum’s website.
Shortly before missiles rained down on Ukraine, the nation’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had said that the “future of European security is being decided now, here in Ukraine.”
Russian forces on Friday were closing in on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, though Moscow agreed to engage in talks with the Ukrainian government. President Joe Biden had announced severe economic sanctions against Russia, and other nations have followed suit. The Pentagon is deploying some 7,000 more troops to Europe, not to fight in Ukraine but to defend and reassure NATO allies, Biden said.
“We stand up to bullies,” he said on Twitter. “We stand up for freedom. This is who we are.”
The museum collection also includes modern artifacts, commentary on present-day politics: Behind one glass display case is a small statue of a dragon with a face sculpted in the likeness of Putin.
Straddling the dragon is a Ukrainian soldier with a club behind his back, poised to strike.
“I hate this face, but I like this item,” said Klimchak, nodding in the direction of the statue. “Ukraine will never be back under the umbrella of the Soviet Union. They’ll never fall. They’ll never give up.”
‘Doesn’t seem possible’
Orysia Kourbatov, the museum’s administrator, was up all night watching the invasion unfold on the news, in disbelief.
“Is this really happening?” she keeps asking herself. “It doesn’t seem real. It doesn’t seem possible.”
Her husband and parents emigrated from eastern Ukraine, the scene of some of the worst fighting, where many of their relatives remain.
She was able to reach and speak with one cousin in Kyiv.
“At first, they said they were going to go west but there’s traffic lines,” Kourbatov said, tears welling in her eyes. “They’re all stuck, there’s nowhere to go. So, she said they’re staying put.”
Another cousin in eastern Ukraine emailed her a prayer, which translated into English reads in part: Bless us and turn away the hands of those who plot evil against humanity! We stand and are strengthened only by faith in Your Almighty and Power!
“Our people, everyone has been through so, so much,” Kourbatov said.
She recalled how her grandmother lost five children during the Holodomor, an intentional man-made famine engineered by Josef Stalin from 1932 to 1933, which killed millions of Ukrainians.
A museum exhibit documents this horrific period with photos and articles; the Soviet tactic was an attempt “to crush the Ukrainian people’s desire to create a separate destiny for their country,” according to a museum description.
While Kourbatov said she believes Ukraine has been supported by other European nations and the United States, she added that the international community needs to do more, including banning Russia from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication system, known as SWIFT, as well as charging Putin with war crimes.
“Now it’s a full-out war,” she said. “Those sanctions aren’t enough.”
Uniting with Ukraine
Lydia Tkaczuk, president of the board of directors of the museum, said some of her relatives in Ukraine are fleeing or making preparations for their safety.
“One family member, she wouldn’t even talk to me,” Tkaczuk said. “She said ‘We’re packing up and leaving.’ But I don’t even know where they are going to. Other family members say they know of bomb shelters. So, if need be, they will go to the bomb shelter, but they are getting everything ready.”
Others, including several male relatives in Kyiv, intend to stay.
“Because they said they are going to be there, they are going to defend Ukraine,” she said.
Tkaczuk recalled her first trip to her ancestral homeland in the 1970s, while it was under Soviet rule. She recounts how a culture of fear and starkness permeated everyday life.
Her relatives didn’t tell any neighbors in their apartment building that she was from the United States; instead, they said she was visiting from Poland.
“When we talked about any family issues, we did it outside as we would walk,” Tkaczuk said. “We wouldn’t talk about it in the house. … They were afraid that somebody might be listening.”
The contrast was striking when she visited multiple times following Ukraine’s independence in 1991.
She described Kyiv as a cosmopolitan, Western city; its population is just a little larger than Chicago’s.
“It’s like Paris,” she said. “It’s a beautiful city.”
Her most recent trip was over the summer. She stayed in a hotel overlooking the Maidan, Kyiv’s Independence Square, the scene of a series of protests eight years ago that culminated in Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity in February 2014.
The civil unrest was sparked by then-President Viktor Yanukovych’s refusal to sign a European Union agreement, seen as caving to Russian pressure. The pro-Western demonstrations eventually toppled the government, and a Ukrainian court found Yanukovych guilty of treason in 2019.
More than 100 protesters — mainly civilians — who were killed during these demonstrations have been termed the “Heavenly Hundred.”
The museum hosted a candlelight vigil this month in their memory.
“This is how we unite with Ukraine,” Tkaczuk said.
‘Defeat the aggressor’
Vasyl Stetsyuk didn’t sleep the night of the invasion.
“It is surreal to see that and realize what is happening,” he said.
The 34-year-old from west suburban Bartlett immigrated here a decade ago, but his mother, grandfather, cousins and many friends are still in Ukraine.
“Emotionally I’m just, like everybody, stressed out,” he said.
Concentrating on anything else proved difficult, so he took a day off work and spent the morning at a rally where he and other supporters flew Ukrainian flags over the Kennedy Expressway at Harlem Avenue. Later that day, he headed to a protest against the Russian invasion at Sts. Volodymyr and Olha Ukrainian Catholic Church.
“God save Ukraine!” the church posted on its Facebook page. “Lord, have mercy on us!”
Another demonstration is scheduled at the church Sunday afternoon.
Around midday Thursday, Stetsyuk visited the museum, which is across the street from the church, in the heart of the city’s Ukrainian Village neighborhood.
The museum was founded in 1952 by several displaced Ukrainian scholars, so its exhibits and archives would “reflect the lives of those forced by cruel circumstances to leave their homeland,” according to the museum website.
“I am not sure what’s going to happen in the next couple of days,” Stetsyuk said. “But I hope that slowly but surely we will defeat the aggressor and I hope it’s going to end at some point.”
He doesn’t believe the Ukrainian army will fall. He’s optimistic Ukraine will persevere and remain independent.
“I’m pretty sure they will fight until they can’t breathe,” he said. “At some point it will end. But I hope it doesn’t take a long time. And a lot of casualties.”
The Associated Press contributed.