May 28, 2022 - News from Volodymyr.
I receive news of life in Ukraine from our friend, Volodymyr Khomyk. We met Volodya 37 years ago when he came to Seattle on a Gorbachev sponsored program to study Don’s program on alcohol abuse prevention, “Here’s Looking at You.”
That was in the mid 1980s - it was a hopeful time as Gorbachev negotiated with Reagan for a nuclear arms reduction and Gorbachev attempted to bring reform to the Soviet Union with glastnost and perestroika. Unbeknownst to all, those would be the last years before the collapse of the governments of the Soviet Union and its Satellite states. Ukrainian independence came on August 24, 1991 - starting with its exciting and hopeful Declaration of Independence and moving through the rocky early years of inflation and attempts to create a liberal democracy. This was followed by the Orange Revolution in 2004 and the Maidan Protests in 2014, which led Ukraine to lean away from Russia and face toward the West. In retribution for turning away from Russia, Putin attacked Ukraine in 2014, occupying Crimea and sending troops to eastern Ukraine. And, now in 2022, Putin has invaded Ukraine with an existential attack that threatens the very survival of the newly formed state on the eastern border of Europe.
Volodymyr lives in Lutsk, a small city of 200,000. That is where we lived, worked, and studied for a year in 1997-98. Volodymyr was our sponsor who was instrumental in bringing us to Ukraine. A professor of psychology, he recommended to the Dean of the Law School that he hire me to teach comparative law at the Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University.
For an expat, the best experience from life abroad is when you meet a local who acts as your conduit to life in the community. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does it brings to you the joy of living in a foreign place and feeling like you belong. Volodymyr was a guide to the practical things like where to buy food and where to pay your bills. He showed us how to use the local transportation - how to get to work and to school. He introduced us to our neighbors who took us out to the forest for a lunch of shashleek. He introduced me to some artists in town who took me into the Volyn Studio where I developed film, and made friends where we drink lots of vodka, laughed and shared stories. He introduced me to dissidents and judges. And despite not speaking Ukrainian or Russian, we made friends and got to know Ukraine.
As of the end of May 2022, Volodymyr wrote to me that he receives a small monthly pension, $150 - well below what he needs to buy basic goods. He writes that the value of the Ukrainian currency, has gone down considerably. Food prices have gone up and he must pay public utilities for his apartment. Factories and other industries are “constantly reducing,” he writes. “We are getting many products - foods from Western Europe - but I now have almost no food.” He wrote that he was writing “under the loud sound of an air raid warning siren.”
It is particularly hard for the elderly in Ukraine, especially the elderly like Volodymyr who have no family. The only family Volodymyr had when we first met him was his elderly mother who lived alone in a small village, “the Great Out of the Way Place,” near the Chernobyl nuclear plant. In 1997 Volodya made regular trips into the village to see his mother and then he came back with bags of fresh produce and meat. She died a few years ago leaving Volodya alone.
On the good side, Volodymyr lives in Lutsk, not in eastern or southern Ukraine which has suffered terrible losses. Some of the elderly in the east have been unable to get pensions and their neighbors have left them behind. Sometimes, families have even had to leave their disabled elderly. Medical facilities closed.
Volodymyr fears the invasion of the Russians. Who will take care of him?
A week ago, Volodymyr wrote, “But in relation to my own health I am still feeling well. Thanks to God.”