Minnesotans with ties to Ukraine nervously eye situation

On Sunday morning, the congregation at St. Michael's and St. George's Ukrainian Orthodox Church in northeast Minneapolis will say a special prayer.

"We have prayers for Ukraine," the Rev. Myron Korostil said Saturday. "We ask God to make peace."

Korostil added the prayer about a month ago after the Russian military massed on Ukraine's borders, threatening invasion. As in Ukraine, anxiety is rife in the Twin Cities' Ukrainian-American community.

"We don't know what to think," Korostil said. "Also in Ukraine, no one is sure. There is a big danger, and everything is possible."

The tension escalated this weekend. Leaders of Russian breakaway-regions in eastern Ukraine — Russian surrogates, effectively — called for evacuations and military mobilization. Russia itself ran military drills, showing off ballistic missiles that could carry nuclear weapons.

The world waits to see if Russian President Vladimir Putin's provocative gambit on Ukraine leads to a bloody catastrophe. And few are watching more closely than the Ukrainian diaspora in North America.

Minnesota – Minneapolis in particular – has long been home to Ukrainian immigrants. They started arriving in the late 19^th century with a tide of Eastern Europeans and have landed in waves since, including after World War II and the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Estimates of their numbers vary from around 15,000 to 25,000. Many have friends and family in Ukraine. Korostil himself arrived at St. Michael's just four years ago, and he has friends in the Ukrainian Army – and its chaplain corps – deployed in the country's tense eastern regions.

Stefan Iwaskewycz, a Minneapolis photographer whose parents immigrated from Ukraine after World War II, has relatives in the country's west. "There isn't a panic there, there's no run on stores. Everyone says, who knows? – only God knows."

In the Twin Cities Ukrainian community, "there is frustration, anger and pride – and a slow-burning anxiety," said Iwaskewycz, a 47-year-old who speaks Ukrainian and has traveled to the country many times. He lived there for a year.

He said Ukrainian-Americans are wondering: "Is Putin just pushing for concessions from the West? What conditions would he accept to back down? And if he has to stand down his troops, how would he able to spin it to look like a big tough patriot [in Russia]?"

Putin's beef with the West goes back years as NATO expanded into the countries of the former Soviet bloc.

But his push to return Ukraine to Russia's political control is rationalized in a belief that Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians are basically one people – "a single whole" as Putin himself wrote in a 2021 essay called "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians."

All three trace their roots to Kievan Rus, a proto-nation that lasted from the late 9^th century to the mid-1200s. (It was based in Kyiv for most of that time.) The Mongol Empire crushed Kievan Rus. Not until the 17^th century did Russian influence land in a big way in Ukraine.

"Ukrainians have been struggling for three centuries for independence from governments centered in Moscow," Iwaskewycz said.

Many Ukrainians and Russians share the Orthodox faith. But Ukrainians have their own culture and their own language.

"Ukrainians and Russians have many points of connection through their history, but they have also had many points of disconnection," Iwaskewycz said.

Brian Bonner, a Minnesota native and longtime former editor of the English-language Kyiv Post, who has lived in Kyiv for 14 years, said from Ukraine on Saturday that "Ukrainians are not panicking — but a sense of foreboding is building. Something is coming."

"Some took it seriously and left long ago. Most are staying because they have nowhere to go or they want to stay and fight. It is their home, after all," Bonner, a former St. Paul Pioneer Press reporter, wrote in an e-mail. "Militarily, Russia can overpower Ukraine, but good luck occupying a nation of 40 million determined to fight for their country."