A Ukrainian Exile’s Plea to Congress
In early March 2022, I spent two weeks hiding in a basement in my village near Kyiv as Russian soldiers prowled outside. In the months that followed, knowledge of Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine spread rapidly across the world. I could not believe that the international community would tolerate such atrocities and fail to intervene. I never imagined that, two years later, I would be in Washington, D.C., having to implore members of the U.S. Congress not to betray Ukraine.
Even as my family started to run out of food during the initial occupation, it didn’t occur to me that our fate would eventually come to depend on political posturing and partisan point scoring in America, the guarantor of the free world.
Today I am part of a small group that stands near the Capitol waving placards that urge support for Ukraine. We have been holding these protests, in all weather conditions, week after week since October 2023, when the Ukraine aid bill stalled in Congress over a combination of southern-border politics and some Republicans’ hostility toward support for my country.
As long as my hands can still hold a sign on behalf of all those who cannot join me, I will be there. The Capitol Hill vigil takes up most of my day, and at night I work to complete my bachelor’s degree at the Ukrainian university where I am still enrolled.
I am very grateful. If the United States hadn’t taken me in a year ago on a student visa, I wouldn’t be able to make my case for congressional assistance and still continue my studies. I deeply admire this country, but I don’t want to remain here. Like many Ukrainians forced into exile by Russia’s invasion, I want to go home. Helping more than a quarter of a million Ukrainians like me escape a war zone is no substitute for enabling us to win the war so that we can return and rebuild our country.
You don’t have to be Ukrainian to understand the threat that Russia poses. For Americans, this fight should not simply be about choosing sides between Ukraine and Russia. It’s about doing what’s right rather than appeasing a rapacious and predatory evil. It’s about promoting democracy and freedom rather than supporting oppression and imperialism. It’s about living up to America’s historic commitment to a free and democratic Europe.
Although the price tag to help Ukraine seems enormous, the amount of money is small in comparison with what America spends on its own defense—and provides an incalculable investment in U.S. national security. Much of the stockpiled equipment that ends up in Ukraine is outdated as far as the U.S. military is concerned and needs replacement anyway. In this respect, support for Ukraine acts as a giant modernization program for American forces. Ninety percent of these aid dollars actually stay in the U.S., providing manufacturing jobs to tens of thousands of Americans in the armaments industry.
In the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, the U.S. pledged to provide assistance, including military assistance, to help Ukraine defend itself and to guarantee its territorial integrity (though, of course, without sending U.S. troops). The promise America made nearly 30 years ago—renewed by President Joe Biden—was to stand by Ukraine. If American assistance is approved by Congress, Russia can be stopped and held accountable for its aggression and war crimes. I still believe the U.S. will hold to its commitment.
But that belief is getting harder to maintain. To witness the behavior of some Republican members of Congress and their party leader, Donald Trump, together with prominent pro-Russian commentators such as Tucker Carlson, is profoundly demoralizing. They seem content to let America abandon its democratic values and break its word. They seem eager to tell Ukraine to give up and let Russia keep the land it has stolen. They do not contest the idea that large nations can seize territory from smaller ones with impunity, commit atrocities, abduct children.
I struggle to explain to my parents back home why Ukraine has not yet received more vital aid from the U.S. My younger sister thinks the world has forgotten Ukraine. I keep telling her, “It’s not quite like that; we just have to wait a little longer.” But my own doubts are creeping in. Although I can, and will, keep standing outside the Capitol holding my placard, my relatives in Ukraine, along with millions of our compatriots, are running out of time.
America still has the chance to be the mighty ally I imagined it was when I was hiding in that basement from Russian executioners. The U.S. remains the most powerful nation in the world. It has the resources to help us defeat Russia, and it committed itself to doing so. The question is whether it has the will to carry that through.