From her home in Phoenixville, Natalia Korobka follows the daily development of the war in Ukraine, where her brother fights on the front line and her mother is shelled.
“This is a destructive observation of how your country is torn,” said Korobka, the mother of the Three, who moved to the United States with her husband in 2015 and since then observed the conflict between her hometown and Russia dramatically escalation with the Russian invasion for Russian invasion Ukraine three years ago.
When she joined hundreds of other Ukrainian Americans – the Philadelphia region is home for one of the largest Ukrainian population in the country – and their supporters outside the Museum of Art in Philadelphia on the occasion of the third anniversary of this invasion, Korobka organized a poster with a question in many minds: “Ukraine holds the line. Will the US keep their promise? “
While America supported Ukraine during the war with Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin, the future of this Alliance is in the face of a up-to-date uncertainty When the administration of President Donald Trump meets Russia about the end of the war – conversations that have ruled Ukraine so far.
After Trump suggested last week that Ukraine was guilty of the Russian invasion, the US on Saturday forced to kill UN resolution in the matter of Russia for the war, instead reporting its own version, which did not assign themselves to the conflict, Wall Street Journal reported.
Doubts about America’s involvement on Sunday, so in the color of Ukraine outside the Museum of Art, in which the speakers condemned the noticeable torque of Trump towards Russia and called the Americans to express indignation with the perspective of their country on the side of Putin over another democracy.
“We can’t catch Putin’s demands. … This is not the American people-said Iryna Mazur, the honorary consul of Ukraine to Philadelphia, turning to Rallygopers gathered in front of the museum, many of the blue-yellow Ukrainian flags wrapped around their arms. At the museum’s steps, people developed a long flag, holding it in the amount of many rows.
“I ask you, do not remain still,” Mazur told the crowd, calling them to call selected representatives. “Stand up to Ukraine.”
Representative of the American Madeleine Dean, the Democrat of Montgomery, said that Russia had committed a “series of war crimes. You know this and the world knows it. “She called on Trump to reverse the course -” American weakness course, betrayal course ” – and” call on the brutal dictator, which is Putin. “
Some other speakers expressed concerns about America’s involvement towards their own democracy and what every erosion of this system for democracy around the world would mean.
“If the institutions of American democracy are destroyed, there is no Ukraine,” said Mary Kalyna, a local Ukrainian American activist. Describing how her father fought against the Soviets and Nazis during World War II, while her mother was taken by the Nazis to work in Germany, and her grandparents were sent to Siberia after the war, Kalyna said that her story was “” tragically common ”among the Ukrainians.
“We suffered all this and more – generations of genocide, war, occupation … Most at the hands of one aggressor. The aggressor that America does not want to call the aggressor now, ‘Kalyna said.
Historically, many Ukrainian Americans voted for Republican based on the “strong attitude of the party against Russian aggression,” said Kalyna. Republicans should remind you, she said, and “they can pick up their party from the worship that destroyed her.”
In the crowd, the Dubashinsky council kept a poster with the inscription “Republicans who defeated the evil empires, not excuses.” In addition to the message, there was the face of Ronald Reagan and the renowned line of the former president from his speech from 1987, calling on the Soviet leader Michail Gorbachev to remove the Berlin wall: ” Gorbachev, destroy this wall. “
“That’s what I feel,” said Dubashinsky, who came to the USA from Ukraine 30 years ago and lives in Warwick Township. Dubashinsky, who identifies as a Republican, said that she wanted to do everything she could “assure America” for support for Ukraine.
After museum speeches, the crowd marched around the park to the town hall, escorted by the police. After flying with Ukrainian flags, Marchers chanted: “Maks Russia pay” and “Russia is a terrorist state.” The crowd stopped at the Ukrainian flags on Parkway to sing the national national anthem.
Among the marching were Natalia Omelchenko, her husband, Roman and their 12-year-old daughter Oleksandra. The family came to Philadelphia a year and a half ago from Donetsk, after she was forced to escape from his hometown in 2014.
“We would like to say this message: Ukraine is not for sale,” said Natalia Omelchenko, adding that “we can’t even believe what Trump says.”
