War Shifts Political Views in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village, Once Reliably GOP

The Washington Post / David Maraniss

13:30 JST, August 20, 2024

CHICAGO – The Ukrainian Village, a neighborhood nestled only a mile north and slight jog west of the United Center, where Democrats are convening this week, is the heart of the Ukrainian diaspora in Chicago – a compact enclave of faith, hope, resilience, anxiety, fear and a notably transformed political sensibility shaped by old memories and the harsh reality of the Russian invasion of the homeland.

Reminders of that war are everywhere here, more than 5,000 miles from the battlefield. It might be the other war, the largely forgotten war, in much of America and the world, overshadowed by the bloody events in Gaza that are drawing all the noise and protest now, but to the people of Ukrainian Village, it is never far from mind.

The war in Ukraine torments Oksana Ambroz, a fashion designer whose bitter feelings about Russia go back to stories about her father. At age 2, starved and weakened by the Holodomor, the Soviet-caused famine of 1932, he was thrown into a mass trench by Russian soldiers and left to die before his horrified mother pulled him to safety. The war haunts Slava Pillyuyko, a psychiatrist who each night calls his friends and family in the Ukrainian city of Khmelnytskyi, trying to help them deal with the trauma of constant shelling. If they drink, he said, they now drink more; if they had insomnia before, they now sleep even less, never knowing whether the next day will be their last.

Walk the streets of the Ukrainian Village and feel the sorrow of a distant war. “Stop Putin, Stop War” posters in storefront windows. Flower-bedecked memorial crosses in churchyards. Blue and yellow flags fluttering in the late summer breeze. Photo exhibits of wounded soldiers and uprooted families in the museum. Pockets of newly arrived refugees huddling outside a building that offers relocation assistance. And endless discussions in English and Ukrainian, about the war – what is happening from Kursk to Kyiv, what might happen next, and what the 2024 presidential tickets are doing and saying about it all.

Despair here over Republican diffidence, or outright dismissal, of Ukrainian pleas for support in fighting Russian aggression has rearranged the political landscape. “This area used to be totally Republican,” said Marta Farion, vice president of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, who lives across the street from the Sts. Volodymyr and Olha Ukrainian Catholic Church and has visited Ukraine 55 times. The dominant viewpoint was conservative and staunchly anti-communist. “Ronald Reagan was revered here,” she said. “When he said ‘Tear down this wall!’ he was speaking for all of us who suffered under the Soviets.”

But even as Ukrainian Villagers remain culturally conservative and generally receptive to GOP positions on abortion and crime, they saw a vast distance between the old party of Reagan and the party that President Donald Trump has refashioned as more isolationist.

Many expressed dismay over Trump’s cozy relationship with Vladimir Putin and the way as Trump seemed to trust the autocrat’s propaganda more than the findings of U.S. intelligence services. They blamed recalcitrant Republicans in the House for delaying U.S. aid that Ukraine desperately needed. “Each of those six months added hundreds more killed,” Pillyuyko lamented. And then came Trump’s new running mate, JD Vance, who once was quoted as saying, “I got to be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.”

If Trump returns to the White House, Farion said, she feared that “he will sell Ukraine down the pike. He says he will end the war right away, but that only means he will make a deal with Putin. We know he is going to make a deal with Putin. … The future of Ukraine is on the line in this election.”

Farion spoke while seated at a round table in the basement cafeteria of Sts. Volodymyr and Olha after a Sunday service, not far from a spread of Ukrainian pastries. Dozens of parishioners were drinking coffee and eating desserts at nearby tables. Seated next to Farion was Chrystya Wereszczak, vice chair of the church council, who nodded her head in agreement, then said, “It will be the biggest desecration in U.S. history of the defense of freedom.”

Wereszczak was quick to add that the neighborhood still had many Republicans who came to the party because of its opposition to abortion and strong history of anti-communism. “But a lot say either they’re not going to vote or not vote for Trump.” Illinois has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1992 and is expected to continue its streak this fall.

At the Ukrainian National Museum across the street from the church, Ambroz and Pillyuyko work as volunteer tour guides. Ambroz, who arrived in America penniless in 1997 and built her own design company from scratch, had just returned from a month’s visit to see her son and other relatives in Kyiv. She came away with a renewed sense of hope and deep admiration for her people. “I am so proud of Ukrainians as humans, and the very heroic way they’ve endured, these little acts that reveal the most about them.”

She talked about how the elevators in her nephew’s apartment had little boxes on the floor filled with water and crackers and anxiety medications in case people were trapped in them when Kyiv officials felt the need to turn the electricity off, which happened almost every day. When it did, she would walk up the 19 floors to the apartment just like everyone else. And she recalled the time when a missile exploded between two nearby buildings and blew out all the windows of the first-floor coffee shop. “It happened at 3 in the morning, and by 9, the people had cleaned out all the glass and replaced it with plastic so the shop could open again. Little things like that, acts of resilience every day.”

When Ambroz returned to the United States, she fell back into the habit of searching for news about Ukraine at all hours. “I look before I go to bed at night. I wake up at 3 to try to get the latest. And then I look again when I wake up for good at 7. I can never get enough information.”

Generations of mistreatment shaped her antipathy toward Russia, she said. Her grandfather, an economist, spent eight years in a Soviet prison. Other relatives on her mother’s side disappeared into Siberia and were never heard from again. This family history shaped her politics. She became an American citizen 15 years ago and has voted in every election since. “This country has always supported freedom and the soldiers of Ukraine are fighting for freedom,” Ambroz said. “I will vote for whoever will fight for freedom.”

Pillyuyko, the psychiatrist, who was also a national billiards champion in Ukraine, arrived in Chicago in 2022, only five days before the war started. His take on American politics was subtle and complicated. He said he was reluctant to criticize Trump and Vance because he was not yet a U.S. citizen, but added, “If they are elected, it will be more difficult.” He appreciated the support that President Joe Biden has given his homeland, fearing that without it, the death toll would be in the millions, then added, “But none of this might have happened if Obama had responded more strongly when Putin seized Crimea 10 years ago, so it’s not perfect on any side. But Ukrainians are grateful to the world anyway. Putin said he’d have Kyiv in three days. It’s now getting near three years.”

From his home in Chicago, after hearing harrowing stories in his phone calls to Ukraine, he tries to keep his mood in balance by listening to progressive rock, especially Jethro Tull and Genesis, and searching for humor on social media. When he finds something good, he sends it back home. “I need it. They need it. We all need it,” he said.