{"id":118,"date":"2014-07-29T15:24:35","date_gmt":"2014-07-29T15:24:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ukrainianengineering.com\/?p=118"},"modified":"2014-07-29T15:25:06","modified_gmt":"2014-07-29T15:25:06","slug":"beating-heart-ukraine-independence-felt-buffalo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ukrainianengineering.com\/?p=118","title":{"rendered":"Beating heart of Ukraine independence felt in Buffalo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beating heart of Ukraine independence felt in Buffalo <\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"

Emil Bandriwsky walks by a signed Ukrainian flag that was present at the recent uprising against Russia in that country. It is displayed above a tribute memorial in the Dnipro Ukrainian Culture Center\u2019s lobby on Genesee Street. Robert Kirkham\/Buffalo News photos<\/p><\/div>\n

By Donn Esmonde<\/a> –<\/em><\/strong> The Buffalo News Senior Metro Columnist –<\/strong><\/em> May 3, 2014<\/p>\n

The beating heart of Ukraine\u2019s freedom movement fills the building on Genesee Street in Buffalo.<\/p>\n

The Dnipro Ukrainian Cultural Center, a gray, three-story structure that most of us pass without much thought, is more than a slice of Eastern Europe on Buffalo\u2019s East Side. The century-old structure is an outpost of solidarity with distant friends and relatives. Its walls barely contain the anger, anxiety and distress over turmoil in a homeland desperate to lurch into the 21st century, yet yoked economically to a historic oppressor bent on retightening its grip.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll people want is to break free of that Russian control,\u201d Emil Bandriwsky, Dnipro\u2019s treasurer, recently told me, \u201cand to live more like Europeans live.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fears inside the Dnipro building are as raw and real as in Kiev. In the lobby is a mini-tribute to Maidan, the capital city\u2019s \u201cindependence\u201d square where the ongoing anti-government protests began. The display is a hodgepodge of news photos, testimonials and yellow construction helmets. The modesty of its scope is enhanced by the intensity of its sentiment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t hate Russians,\u201d Bandriwsky said of the bordering superpower. \u201cWe just want them to go away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of those with Ukrainian blood here have friends or relatives there. Technology erases the miles. Facebook, Twitter, cellphone and email make it seem like Kiev is across the river, not an ocean away.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone here feels directly connected to what\u2019s going on there,\u201d said Dnipro regular Dianna Derhak.<\/p>\n

The news lately has not been good. Russian President Vladimir Putin has not sat idly by as Moscow\u2019s former colony drifts culturally and economically closer to Europe. Tens of thousands of Russian troops are massed at Ukraine\u2019s eastern border. Russia last month annexed the eastern Ukrainian province of Crimea. Pro-Russian militants have seized government buildings in other eastern provinces and assaulted pro-reform protesters.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just spoke by phone with my cousin, Zenon,\u201d in Kiev, said Bandriwsky. \u201cHe\u2019s terrified. They think an invasion is imminent. They\u2019re praying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Praying for what?<\/p>\n

\u201cPraying for God to give our enemies some brains,\u201d replied Bandriwsky, only half-joking, \u201cPeople are careful what they write in letters, send in emails. When you go outside, you don\u2019t talk about politics, you\u2019re careful what you say. It\u2019s like under Stalinism again.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fears are felt half a world away.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of us here are on pins and needles,\u201d said John Riszko, 69, a Dnipro regular with cousins in Ukraine. \u201cIt\u2019s a morally depressing situation. I get emails, I spend a lot of my time reading every different angle on things.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s at stake<\/strong><\/p>\n

The unrest started last November, when since-deposed president Viktor Yanukovych rejected closer economic ties with the European Union in favor of tighter embrace with his pal Putin. What was widely seen by Ukrainians as a betrayal of a brighter future sparked protests in Kiev\u2019s central Maidan (pronounce my-DON) square. Violence and skirmishes in the ensuing months spread to the eastern provinces, where Russian influence is greater \u2013 even while Ukrainians prepare to elect a new president on May 25.<\/p>\n

The growing violence between Ukrainian reformers and pro-Russian militias reflect a larger struggle \u2013 between the promise of a more enlightened Western-style future versus the grip of a politically polluted, Russian-influenced past. Although independent since the Soviet Union\u2019s dissolution in 1991, Ukraine remains a politically corrupt state in the economic and militaristic shadow of its long-time oppressor.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany Ukrainians have been to Europe, they\u2019ve been to the United States,\u201d said Dianna Derhak, a Buffalo-born Ukrainian-American who specializes in international project management. \u201cThey know it\u2019s not a panacea there, but it\u2019s a whole lot better than what they\u2019re experiencing\u201d<\/p>\n

Like everyone I spoke to on a recent evening, Derhak \u2013 54, model-thin, with the charm of a talk show host \u2013 feels in her soul the hope and pain of what\u2019s happening in her ancestral homeland.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople just want the police to protect them,\u201d she told me, leaning in to stress every word. \u201cFor the hospitals to care for them. For a functioning judiciary. For not having to pay bribes at every turn. Everyone is just sick of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

What started largely as a November student protest at Maidan ignited into massive outrage after riot police beat the demonstrators.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt became more about an institutional disregard for the law that people could no longer tolerate,\u201d said Derhak, who lived in Ukraine for 14 years, and returned in January to join the Maidan protesters. \u201cPeople had just had enough. It was like, \u2018Don\u2019t beat our children.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n

Solidarity at Dnipro<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 ethnic Ukrainians in Greater Buffalo, the meaty, yoke-shouldered Bandriwsky estimated. A core of 200 are active at the volunteer-run Dnipro Center. Named after the country\u2019s largest river, the three-story building is a jack-in-the-box of surprises, from a bowling alley to a basement bar-restaurant. The biggest eye-popper is a grand second-floor theater, its stage front and walls adorned with hand-painted scenes of Ukrainian life. The space has seen everything from political rallies to boxing matches to wedding receptions.<\/p>\n

Many of the Dnipro Center regulars speak Ukrainian. They show up in force on Friday nights for pierogi and stuffed cabbage, washed down with dark Obolon beer. Painted high on the building\u2019s flank is the blue and yellow swatch of the Ukrainian flag \u2013 symbolizing grain sprung from the country\u2019s rich soil, under a vivid blue sky.<\/p>\n

All of more than a dozen Dnipro Center regulars I spoke with recently shared concerns for Ukrainian friends and relatives \u2013 and voiced antipathy for a Russian leader they regard as little more than an ex-KGB thug. In an upstairs room hangs a poster of \u201cAdolf Putin,\u201d complete with toothbrush mustache and a swastika backdrop.<\/p>\n

Mike Liwicki is a retired FBI special agent who specialized in foreign counterintelligence and espionage.<\/p>\n

\u201cPutin was a lieutenant-colonel in the KGB, and in my opinion, you don\u2019t change your stripes,\u201d Liwicki said. \u201cWhat he\u2019s doing now in Ukraine is terrifying, because I know that Putin is not going to stop. During Sochi, the Olympics, he\u2019s thinking about Crimea. Now that he\u2019s got Crimea, he\u2019s thinking the eastern part of Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the downstairs restaurant, a continuous feed from a Ukrainian news station played on the corner TV. The crowd scarfing down pierogi at tables or gathered in knots at the bar absorbed televised images of eastern Ukrainian protesters being carried off on stretchers after \u201cencounters\u201d with pro-Russian militia.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll bad news, all the time,\u201d Bandriwsky cracked.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s annexation of Crimea last month prompted U.S. and European economic sanctions. Many fear that Putin wants to pick off more former Russian territories. Their concerns were stoked Thursday, when Putin demanded that Ukraine withdraw its troops from the eastern provinces, where pro-Russian separatists \u2013 some of them waving Russian flags \u2013 occupy government buildings and battle with \u2013 or simply assault \u2013 protesters.<\/p>\n

Bandriwsky and about a half-dozen others from the Dnipro Center soon will travel to Ukraine, as official monitors for the May 25 election. They hope the election of a reform-minded president will end the violence and move the country closer to a European-style modernization \u2013 and away from Moscow\u2019s heavy hand. The fear is that Putin \u2013 intent on enhancing Russia\u2019s status and influence \u2013 will not happily wave good-bye.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a narcissistic megalomaniac,\u201d said Liwicki, the ex-FBI counterintelligence expert, \u201cwho wants to re-create the old Soviet Union.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoping for a better life<\/strong><\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s foil in Ukraine was Yanukovych, the president ousted by Parliament in February who has since fled to Russia. He for many personified the corruption that makes American scandal-mongers look like comparative pickpockets.<\/p>\n

The institutional abuse of public trust, not coincidentally, reflects Ukraine\u2019s embrace of the Russian political model: Power concentrated in the president, tight party control and top-to-bottom corruption. No Ukrainian was surprised by the notorious pocket-lining that marked the run-up to Putin\u2019s Sochi Olympics. They live it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all right from the Russian playbook,\u201d Derhak said of the institutional dishonesty.<\/p>\n

Ernst & Young in 2012 rated Ukraine among the three most corrupt nations in the world. Payoffs to cops, inspectors and judges are accepted as a routine part of doing business.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf someone has a successful business,\u201d Derhak said, \u201cthey\u2019re going to get a visit from the government, saying they need to share \u2013 or, when Yanukovych was in power, just a \u2018we\u2019re taking over.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n

Bandriwsky nodded in agreement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a straight-up organized crime operation,\u201d he said. \u201cThey cleaned out the treasury. Millions in cash, gold.\u201d<\/p>\n

Protesters who entered the presidential mansion and estate after Yanukovych fled in February were amazed to find rooms lit with $100,000 chandeliers, a private zoo, a fleet of cars, a boat and an 18-hole golf course \u2013 all somehow acquired on a $2,000-a-month salary.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had a fetish for Swiss watches,\u201d Derhak noted. \u201cIt\u2019s easy for the corrupt to operate and get rich when there is no rule of law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liwicki, the ex-FBI agent, felt corruption\u2019s grip from Buffalo. He sent a $75 stethoscope to a niece in medical school.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo this day, I have no idea whether she got it,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have to bring your own medicine to the hospital, even your own toilet paper.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t going to send money, because we all know what happens,\u201d he added. \u201cWe want to help as much as we can, but there\u2019s no guarantee of anything getting to where you want it to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Resistance<\/strong><\/p>\n

Derhak was in Kiev last January and joined the Maidan protesters, clad in hard hats and face masks to neutralize police tear gas. Pro-Western demonstrators threw stones, fashioned Molotov cocktails and lit tire fires against riot police, whose beatings and bullets \u2013 notably during a February crackdown \u2013 have claimed hundreds of lives. The skirmishes in what reform-minded Ukrainians call \u201cThe Revolution of Dignity\u201d more recently spread to the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople injured during the skirmishes were kidnapped out of hospitals by government forces, so we stopped using hospitals,\u201d said Derhak, who has lived in a handful of Ukrainian cities. \u201cGroups are afraid to meet in apartments, they know they\u2019re being watched. So they go to restaurants, go to the library … They feel like they are defending their future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Living in tents, they came and went, bringing in food, water and firewood \u2013 a city within a city.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they left the perimeter, they took off the blue-and-yellow\u201d national colors,\u201d Derhak said. \u201cThey were afraid of being beaten by [pro-Russian] thugs. But they still came.\u201d<\/p>\n

History<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ukrainian antipathy for Russia is hard-earned. The walls of the Dnipro Center\u2019s library are adorned with posters delineating various Russian oppressions and atrocities. Chief among them is the \u201cfamine\/genocide\u201d of 1932-33, when millions of Ukrainians starved to death while Moscow exported grain.<\/p>\n

There is a nearby map of Stalin-era Soviet \u201crelocation camps.\u201d Ukraine was essentially a Russian colony for 300 years, with various attempts to smother its language and culture. So the back-story isn\u2019t pretty.<\/p>\n

The country\u2019s bizarrely titled anthem, \u201cUkraine Is Not Dead Yet,\u201d reflects centuries of subjugation and perseverance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe title sounds odd, I know,\u201d said Riszko, who \u2013 like many Dnipro Center regulars \u2013 speaks Ukrainian. \u201cBut when you consider the genocide perpetrated for hundreds of years, it\u2019s like a battle cry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite heavier pro-Russian sentiments in the eastern provinces, current events are viewed by most Ukrainians through the prism of centuries of abuse by their powerful neighbor. Putin, in that sense, is just more of the same.<\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s claim that he is massing troops merely to protect \u201cRussian speakers\u201d in eastern Ukraine has prompted a national joke.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Ukraine, people can speak whatever they want in Russian,\u201d Bandriwsky said. \u201cIn Russia, they can keep quiet in any language.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even the recent annexation vote in Crimea, an autonomous republic within Ukraine with a large Russian-speaking population, is viewed with suspicion.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople voted like this,\u201d said Dnipro regular Ray Kowalyk, aiming a finger to his temple like a gun barrel. \u201cOr they were threatened with losing their pensions, losing their jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Putin will do<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many pro-Western Ukrainians feel Putin\u2019s attitude was captured in a reported 2008 comment to then-President George W. Bush: \u201cYou have to understand, George. Ukraine is not even a country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many fear it may not be an independent country much longer, and feel Putin is eyeing former Russian territories on the eastern border.<\/p>\n

\u201cPutin claims it\u2019s a military exercise,\u201d Derhak said of the massed Russian troops. \u201cBut they\u2019ve started to set up supply lines to support an invasion, that\u2019s how their intentions became clear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Russia has an economic stake in stopping Ukraine from westernizing. Closer European ties open Ukraine to cheaper goods and services, which would then funnel into Russia, threatening a payoff-driven economy.<\/p>\n

A Ukrainian lurch toward Europe would hurt Russia economically and stain the superpower status that Putin craves. Beyond that, the Russian strongman may fear unrest at home.<\/p>\n

\u201cPutin is deathly afraid the democracy movement will spread to Russia,\u201d Derhak said, \u201cinspired by what\u2019s happening in Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liwicki thinks Putin is counting on appeasement, as he picks off eastern provinces that were once under Russian control.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a chess player, he\u2019s not going to invade,\u201d Liwicki said. \u201cHe\u2019ll take Ukraine piece by piece. The West thinks, \u2018OK, we\u2019ll give him this, and maybe he\u2019ll stop.\u2019 He won\u2019t. Putin\u2019s goal is to create a Eurasian Union.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Dnipro Center, it\u2019s a shared concern. The pro-Russian militants confronting pro-reform protesters in the eastern provinces are seen as a mix of Russian special forces, local militia and pro-Russian Ukrainians \u2013 some of them mercenaries.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Maidan protesters were \u2018armed\u2019 mostly with sticks, pots and cobblestones dug out of the street,\u201d Bandriwsky said. \u201cThey welcomed the media. Contrast that to the eastern Ukrainian \u2018self-defense\u2019 forces, some dressed in Russian military uniforms, with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. Which do you think is the real protest movement?\u201d<\/p>\n

At Dnipro Center, the answer is obvious. If only the future were as certain.<\/p>\n

email: desmonde@buffnews.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"

Dianna Derhak at Dnipro supports Ukrainian freedom<\/p><\/div>\n

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