Because New York contains people from every corner of the world, nothing that happens in the world goes unnoticed. For something like the Russian invasion of Ukraine, New Yorkers who didn’t know saw just how much Ukrainians have influenced our city.
I remember discovering an area known as Little Ukraine when I was younger walking around Greenwich Village with my family. This was back in the days when much of the East Village was still considered unsafe. While the East Village was dominated by homeless, squatters, drug use and the like, it was a pleasant surprise to come across a store window with a large display of Ukrainian decorated Easter eggs called pysanka. While the Ukrainian presence and influence in New York predates the 1917 Russian Revolution, Ukraine was part of the U.S.S.R. at the time, and the sight of these intricately decorated eggs took on a special alure as something from the other side of the Iron Curtain.
That area of the East Village still retains much of the influence of the Eastern European immigrant communities that once dominated there—the Ukrainian Museum remains in the East Village, while the large Ukrainian Society building is on the Upper East Side—and the New York area has many Ukrainian restaurants, sports clubs, and social clubs.
Many New Yorkers didn’t realize how many of their friends and coworkers were of Ukrainian heritage until the Russian invasion loomed. Once the invasion was underway, Ukrainians around the world got to work and New York’s Ukrainian diaspora serves as the tip of the spear. A coworker has family in the Ukraine and has been working tirelessly on helping build support for the war effort in the U.S. and making sure the word gets out about what’s happening on the ground in the battle zones. I can’t help but be exceedingly proud to work with people who are entrenched so fully in such an effort. I spoke with him to make sure a coffee mug for the Ukrainian effort offered by West Virginia’s East Wheeling Clayworks was legit—it is and you should order one.
People in the arts have held benefits for Razom for Ukraine—the principle nonprofit helping the Ukrainian cause today providing humanitarian aid for civilians affected by the invasion—and New York is turning its talents to send whatever aid can be mustered.
Russia’s naked and brutal aggression has reverberated beyond a regional conflict and become a worldwide moral outrage. Since the end of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia two decades ago, Europe has been relatively peaceful, and this kind of full-scale war in Europe breaks through the usual Western slumber when it comes to armed conflict and atrocities around the globe. And Ukraine had been through this before, fighting a Russian invasion of the Crimea in 2014.
The horror at and repugnance towards the invasion has been matched by both the bravery and fortitude of the Ukrainians and collective efforts of Ukraine supporters in New York, the U.S. and around the world. The Ukrainian blue and yellow can be found adorning storefronts and residential windows around the city, and not just in places with historic ties to Eastern Europe.
In the largely Asian immigrant area of Flushing, Queens, Easter sidewalk drawings outside a house included a large heart chalked in the Ukrainian colors.
The conflict in Ukraine continues. We have not seen the worst of what the Russian invaders are capable of, nor have we seen the best yet of the fighting spirit that will keep Ukraine free.
