SEATTLE — Members of the Ukrainian community in western Washington spoke out Friday on the tensions between Ukraine and Russia as President Joe Biden and NATO allies have warned an invasion could come any moment.
It is a proud yet little known fact in western Washington. Ukrainian Americans live here by the hundreds of thousands. Washington has the fifth-highest concentration of Ukrainian immigrants of any state in the nation.
They flooded here after the Soviet Union collapsed 30 years ago and now wonder what will happen if the Russians try to reclaim Ukraine and the land of the friends and family still in the country.
"I worry about what is going on in Ukraine," said a straightforward Valeriy Goloborodko. "They are testing us."
Goloborodko, who lives in Bellevue, serves as the honorary consul for the Ukrainian Consulate in Seattle.
"The threat – it is there. We know that. We Ukrainians know that very well," he said in between meetings on Friday.
"We're looking at a humanitarian disaster of catastrophic proportion in Europe since World War II. I'm concerned for my family," admitted Katerina Sedova of Seattle.
She migrated here in the early 90s, has worked in the tech sector and is now a research fellow for the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University. Sedova said she has been in constant contact with family in Ukraine and said some are concerned, and others have learned to live with the threat. After all, there have been tensions since 2014 when Russian troops invaded the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.
But even this is different, she said.
"We're looking at over 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border,” Sedova said. “We're looking at troops pulled from all the way in the far east, 12 time zones. If this is an exercise, it's a pretty serious exercise and the largest we have ever seen. Yeah, it's a serious threat.
"Ukraine stands on the boundary of defending exactly the same rights and freedoms that people of the United States have fought for and died for centuries. It's a young democracy; it wants to stay a young democracy."
Across town, Lidia Mykytyn shared a similar view, as an advisor for the Ukrainian Association of Washington State.
"Ukraine did absolutely nothing to provoke the Russian troops at the border," she said.
Mykytyn recently revisited her roots in 2018 as part of a humanitarian mission in a conflict zone on the eastern edge of the country. She believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to recreate a sphere of influence.
"I hope that diplomatic means come to the table, (because) any type of military invasion, any type of war is going to have its ramifications that are going to hit us globally," Mykytyn said
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that he is urging people to turn down the rhetoric and dial down the panic.
Yet, half a world away, in this cluster of Ukrainian immigrants, they aren't ready to calm down just yet.
"It is about principal and balance," said Goloborodko. "Those values need to be protected."