For Philly Ukrainian Americans, military victories over Russia generate hope and elation

Ukraine’s stunning series of military victories has cheered a local Ukrainian American community that sorely needed some good news.

For 10 days it’s been all people can talk about.

But that doesn’t mean anyone has stopped working, stopped pushing to deliver supplies, donations, and attention to a Ukrainian war effort that is suddenly reclaiming ground.

Nearly everyone here, some 70,000 in one of the largest Ukrainian enclaves in the country, has family members overseas, many of them fighting in the armed services. And in war, even success gets people killed. If anything, the dramatic Ukrainian advances against a bigger, presumably unbeatable Russian army are driving people here to work harder and do more.

“Their hearts. ... Something shifted. Something shifted inside,” said Iryna Mazur, honorary consul to Ukraine in Philadelphia. “I don’t have a proper word to describe it, but people are looking to victory.”

Mazur is among those who have worked nearly nonstop since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, ping-ponging among Philadelphia, New York, and Washington for events, rallies, and ceremonies. Now she and others move, not with greater purpose, but perhaps with a greater sense of possibility.

Last week the New York Times asked, “Could Ukraine actually win its war against Russia?”

Mary Kalyna thinks so.

“I was weeping with joy,” said the Ukrainian American activist. “Everyone I know had their spirits lifted. I feel much more upbeat than I have in a long time, like my whole physical being has changed.”

Remember, she said, experts said the war would be over in three days, a quick, decisive Russian victory over a smaller, weaker neighbor. Instead, Ukraine fought to a near-draw — and today is moving forward.

Now when Kalyna’s clock radio goes off in the morning, she’s eager to hear the news, not dreading it. It propels her into an already full schedule of activism.

This weekend she was traveling to speak at a high school reunion in Auburn, N.Y., where classmates oriented the event to raise money for Ukraine. She helps lead a weekly vigil for Ukraine outside the Unitarian Society of Germantown. And she recently took on the job of Ukrainian cultural liaison for a pop-up art exhibit in Philadelphia, the Stand With Ukraine Listening Loom Project, where textile artists use weaving to welcome Ukrainians displaced by the war.

Others are working too.

A Ukrainian Food and Culture Festival takes place Saturday and Sunday in Jenkintown, a Ukrainian dance party will raise funds in Philadelphia on Friday,, and the Shady Brook Farm Fall Festival in Yardley is donating proceeds to Ukraine relief Sept. 24.

“It’s a joy for me as a Ukrainian American, as someone who volunteers, to know we are fighting and are finally making some gains,” said Roman Vengrenyuk, a Philadelphia financial analyst who helps lead Revived Soldiers Ukraine, which brings seriously wounded troops to the United States for treatment.

But people here know Ukrainian troops will suffer in fighting to take back their country. A soldier who lost a leg and a hand is scheduled to arrive soon in Philadelphia for treatment.

Ukrainian forces have retaken almost 3,400 square miles of land amid Russian collapses, mounting a smashing counterattack in a war that seemed to have settled into grinding stalemate.

Authorities in Ukraine said the army took control of the Kharkiv region town of Vovchansk, two miles from the Russian border, which had been seized on the first day of the war. In the former Russian stronghold of Izium, Ukrainian officials said they discovered a mass grave containing more than 400 bodies.

That news has reverberated across the Philadelphia region, home to 15,245 Ukrainian immigrants and 54,324 people of Ukrainian ancestry.

For them, life has changed since the start of the war. They’re on the phone to family members in Ukraine late at night and early in the morning. The TV news has become the background soundtrack, and weekend parties and social events have been replaced by Ukraine fund-raisers.

“When we get together, it’s to talk about the war,” said Olha Dishchuk of Huntingdon Valley. “We talk about what needs to be done.”

Every morning, she calls her parents in the Khmelnytskyi region, in western Ukraine. She needs to know they survived another day before she can start her own, as a nurse in King of Prussia.

When she gets home after work, a second day starts, a shift of fielding calls, arranging events, picking up newly arrived refugees and dropping off supplies and donations.

Dishchuk and her husband, Oleksandr, expect to host the injured soldier who is due to arrive here, the same as they helped Ukrainian Special Force officer Leonid Ovdiiuk when he came to Philadelphia in the spring.

“Everybody is so stressed. So emotional. So on edge,” Dishchuk said.

For a month, she said, she had the best sleep, because her older sister was here from Ukraine. Dishchuk could go to bed knowing her sister was safe. But Natalia Dishchuk recently returned to the Chernivtsi region of southwest Ukraine. And with her departure, the younger sister’s broken sleep returned.

Meanwhile, Ukrainians fleeing the war continue to arrive in the region. Philadelphia officials estimate that at least 10,000 Ukrainians will be here by the end of the year.

Liliia Kravtsova is one of them.

She was an attorney in Odesa, which was bombed on the first day of the war, and now lives with an aunt, uncle, and cousin in Huntingdon Valley. Every day she texts her parents and brother in northern Ukraine.

“I hope very soon we can regain all of our territory, and return to normal life,” she said.

Meanwhile, the reliably cold and rainy Ukrainian winter grows closer. Troops in muddy trenches will need all types of warming and protective supplies, people here say. And Ukrainian civilians must ready for a frozen life in places where water and heat systems are wrecked or damaged.

“A lot of the civilian population lives in ruins,” said Mazur, the consul. “Everyone who is here, we all have somebody who is there — on the front lines, in the cities. But we are not under the shelling, under the bombing. We have to serve a supporting role.”