Marchers respond to White House Ukraine drama

Within hours of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy walking out of a meeting with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance on Friday, Feb, 28, the Twin Cities Ukrainian community had organized an “emergency rally.”

At 5 p.m. that day, more than 100 people marched from the Ukrainian Community Center and over the Hennepin Avenue Bridge and back, bearing Ukrainian and American flags and yellow and blue posters printed with slogans like “Stand with Ukraine: Courage, Compassion, Freedom.” 

The marchers included recent arrivals from Ukraine, people who came here years ago and those who were born in the U.S. to Ukrainian immigrants. There also were community members with no blood ties to Ukraine, simply eager to support their neighbors after a White House meeting turned into Trump and Vance berating Zelenskyy in front of the media.

Oksana Gren, who attended the rally, said that she was “stunned and shocked,” to see the news coverage of the meeting. Gren was born in Crimea, a peninsula that juts into the Black Sea in southeastern Ukraine. It’s currently Russian-occupied. She came to the United States in 1991 with her parents, siblings and grandmother. Her parents left, she said, to be free of the Soviets. “We are still dealing with the same powers,” she said.

Nataliya Koppes was also at the march, and shared her thoughts in a telephone conversation two days later. “It scared me for Ukraine and made me worry for the United States, as democracy and freedom also felt jeopardized.” 

As diplomacy unraveled, Koppes’ thoughts turned toward three young men: her 30-year-old nephew in Ukraine who was seriously wounded in combat in December, her cousin, a lieutenant serving in a war zone in Sumy Oblast, and her 21-year-old son, who’s with her here, and whom she could imagine being there. “It’s close to home. It’s painful.”

In describing the exchange between Zelenskyy and the U.S. leaders, Koppes said, “On so many levels, it was so wrong. It kind of felt like Godfather style. It was not even diplomatic. I never expected … a leader of the free world, to behave that way.” 

Stefan Iwaskewycz echoed that in conversation at the Ukrainian Community Center the Sunday after the rally, saying that he was “completely outraged.” “The behavior was totally unbecoming of the leaders of a supposedly civilized nation,” he said. “This is not becoming of a country as wealthy and as powerful as we are.”

He questioned the professed faith of the president and vice president. “My understanding of morality and religion, whether it’s Christian or Buddhist or whatever, is that you do something that is good because it is good. You don’t do it transactionally. I think every spiritual leader has said that the wealthy and the powerful have a duty to share and to protect those who need.”

Iwaskewycz’s grandfather was one of the founders of the Ukrainian Community Center, and Iwaskewycz, a former board member at the center, lived in Ukraine in 2004 during the Orange Revolution, when mass protests helped bring a pro-Western president to power.

Trump’s contention that Ukraine started the war hit a nerve with Iwaskewycz, who has a degree in history. He explained that the struggle goes as far back as 1709, when Ukrainian Cossack leader Ivan Mazepa led the fight against Russian control. “And many generations of Ukrainians, ever since then, have had to fight for their right to exist … Ukrainians didn’t start the war, and it also didn’t start February 24, 2022. It didn’t start in 2014. It’s been going on … for centuries.”