Three years after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Olena Levko-Sendeha couldn’t have predicted things would look like this.
A war still raging. A U.S. president sympathizing with Russia. And 40,000-plus newly arrived Ukrainians in Chicago dealing with the uncertainty of a suddenly warming relationship with America’s longtime nemesis — Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I never thought this would happen,” said Levko-Sendeha, who immigrated with her family to Chicago from Ukraine in 2000. Now she’s the program director of Selfreliance Association, a Ukrainian Village nonprofit that helps families like hers settle into a new country.
“We couldn’t believe we’d ever see war in the 21st century. It’s like a horror movie that keeps playing there, but it’s the everyday lives of people,” Levko-Sendeha said. She worries thousands of lives soon could be upended here, too, because President Donald Trump’s administration has mulled rescinding temporary protected status that has allowed so many Ukrainians into the U.S.
“When they come into office and they change everything, the unknown is the worst part of it,” Levko-Sendeha said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. Everything might drop.
Many Chicagoans with ties to Ukraine are on edge as Trump has taken a softer stance toward Russia over the past week, reversing the U.S. policy of isolating the Kremlin and announcing diplomatic talks to end the war — without inviting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the table.
In a dramatic shift from the backing for Kyiv shown by former President Joe Biden, Trump has falsely blamed Ukraine for starting the war, and labeled Zelenskyy “a dictator” as fighting has delayed elections in the country by almost a year. The Trump administration has also pressed Ukraine to give the U.S. billions of dollars worth of rare minerals in return for aid.
On Monday, the war’s three-year anniversary, the U.S. sided with Russia in voting against a United Nations resolution condemning Moscow for the conflict.
“It’s a betrayal of the idea of this country being a beacon and providing hope for all oppressed peoples of the world, that they can fight for their own sovereignty,” said Walter Tun, executive director of the Selfreliance Association, whose father fought in the Ukrainian underground against the Nazis and Bolsheviks.
“It’s a betrayal of that ideal that I believe made America what it is — a place in the world where those that don’t have hope can look forward to hope,” Tun said.
Zelenskyy has suggested Trump has been fooled by Russian disinformation. Tun and other Ukrainian Americans in Chicago told the Sun-Times they feel the same way.
“The president may not be fully aware of the cultural differences between Ukrainians and Russians. Since Russia won the Second World War, they got to write the history books with the mistaken view, or purposely misleading Russian view, that these are one people. That’s the same kind of propaganda now being parroted by our administration.”
Hearing the White House’s friendlier tone toward Russia is “just surreal to me,” said Forest Park business development director Mike Kalynyuk, who was born in Ternopil. “I think it’s very surreal to all Ukrainians here, and I’m sure for a lot of Americans too.”
“The fact that you have the American president basically talking about how Vladimir Putin is a great leader — man, that’s a slap in the face, not just (to) Ukrainians here, but also Americans too, especially the ones that died in the Vietnam War and the Korean War, fighting communists,” Kalynyuk said.
It’s all come “as an ice bucket of water over the head” for Mariya Dmytriv-Kapeniak, president of the Illinois division of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America.
“For the leader of the free world to say something 180 degrees different from the truth is very shocking,” said Dmytriv-Kapeniak, who says the U.S. shift has renewed grassroots efforts to bring “a just end” to the war.
“The first reaction is shock, but the second reaction is action. People are rallying around once again, contacting their elected representatives to talk some sense into the upcoming negotiations,” she said. “We have to act with the best interest for democracy, really, and the best interest for the United States too, is for Ukraine to be a democratic civilian country.”
Myron Jarosewich, a downtown business management consultant who previously worked for USAID in Ukraine, acknowledged it can be difficult for many to understand how Russian aggression can affect Americans.
“It may not impact you today, but there are things that have to be done to prevent things from getting really bad in the future. Allowing a terrorist dictator to continue has knock-on effects for the U.S. economy. It destabilizes the world. It impacts trade. It means more cyber-attacks,” he said.
Jarosewich, who describes himself as an anti-Trump Republican, said he takes solace in words from his Ukrainian-born father.
“The United States is a huge pendulum. It swings from one side to the next,” he said. “We had McCarthyism. We’ve had other times we survived. We will survive this, but it’s going to take awhile to rebuild from this. A lot of people are quickly waking up and saying, ‘what have we done?’”