As the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches, hundreds filled the Wrigley Building plaza downtown Saturday to call for continued U.S. support for Ukraine and an end to the war.
Many were wrapped in Ukrainian flags, others waved flags, and a young boy and girl handed out small flags. Some dressed in the country’s blue and yellow colors while yelling chants, such as, “Justice for Ukraine,” “Arm Ukraine Now” and “Victory for Ukraine is victory for U.S.”
“If United States fails Ukraine right now, it fails democracy, it fails the values that it stands for,” said Mariya Dmytriv-Kapeniak, president of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, Illinois Division.
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. The move was quickly condemned across the world, and what Russian President Vladimir Putin dubbed a “special military operation” has turned into Europe’s largest conflict since World War II. Tens of thousands have been killed, entire cities have been reduced to smoldering ruins, and Russia was isolated from the West.
Saturday’s rally in Chicago, which lasted a couple of hours, included several Ukrainian musical performances and passionate speeches from officials and activists. It ended with the crowd marching to Water Tower Place.
Protesters held signs reading, “No talks about Ukraine without Ukraine,” “Ukraine is not for sale,” and “The war is not over.” Another read, “Make Russia Small Again.”
“We stand with Ukraine because we don’t want a sovereign democratic nation wiped off the face of the earth,” U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., said at the rally. “We stand with Ukraine for the same reasons we fought the Second World War, that we formed NATO, that we formed the United Nations.”
President Donald Trump last week falsely blamed Ukraine for starting the war, and he has pushed for excluding Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy from negotiations to end the war.
Now as senior Russian and U.S. officials are talking again and setting the stage for a summit meeting, Putin appears closer than ever to cementing Moscow’s gains of about a fifth of Ukraine’s territory and keeping Ukraine out of NATO.
Trump sharply reversed the three-year U.S. policy of isolating Russia when he called Putin and said afterward that they had agreed “to work together very closely” to end the war. He said Zelenskyy “will be involved” in negotiations but didn’t elaborate.
Trump understood Putin’s key demand on the pivotal issue of Ukraine’s prospective NATO membership that the U.S. and other alliance members previously described as irreversible. ”They’ve been saying that for a long time that Ukraine cannot go into NATO,” Trump said of Russia. “And I’m OK with that.”
Former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who was in office when Russia launched its invasion, said at Saturday’s rally: “Never would I have imagined that three years on, we’d be standing here again and again” demanding for Ukrainians to “live peacefully in a sovereign nation.
“To the mothers, to the wives, who left behind their homes, brought their children here to this country, do not despair because in Chicago, you will always have a place, a home and a support,” Lightfoot said. “It doesn’t matter what the dictates of Washington are, you are our family and we will make sure that you are protected.”
Since the invasion, millions of Ukrainians have become refugees, including some 30,000 who have found a new home in Chicago, which has one of the largest populations of Ukrainians in the U.S.
Some Ukrainian refugee children attend school with Olena Vasilik’s two children, who are in the third grade in Norwood Park.
“We’ve encouraged them to support them as much as possible, to help them navigate and transition into American culture, help them with the language,” Vasilik said.
Vasilik, 42, said her grandparents immigrated from Ukraine after World War II and she still has relatives in western Ukraine.
“It’s terrifying just to think what they may be going through,” Vasilik said.
She said it’s also been “an interesting process” trying to teach her children about their heritage. Her kids weren’t at Saturday’s rally, but she has brought them to other rallies and prayer services.
Vasilik has been focused on “trying to explain to them that this is their nationality, this is where they come from, that we should be supporting Ukraine at every chance they have.”
“But it is still challenging for them to fully understand,” Vasilik said. “We try to protect them as much as possible from the horrors of the war.”
Contributing: Associated Press