Parkhomenko spoke with WMUK last week, before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to the U.S.
Transcript
Michael Symonds: I know that you have family there. So, I guess I would start out. How's your family doing so far?
Mariia Parkhomenko: Yeah, thank you for asking. My family is not so well because first of all, it's the occupied region and the standard of living is very low even though they don't have any missile attacks, but there is no good medicine, no good education. The quality of products and medications is quite low and people are constantly, I would say humiliated, and oppressed. There is total authoritarian control. You cannot say anything about Ukraine. There is no freedom.
Symonds: I mean, that must have a great effect on you. It's been three years now at this point, but how are you dealing with the stress?
Parkhomenko: Honestly, just trying to hang in there. That's what I can do. I know that it's out of my control. I'm just worried about my family, their safety, like nobody knows about the future of that region, whether it will be liberated or Russia will keep it, but it seems a bit hopeless honestly.
Symonds: Especially if you ever want to see your family again, there's got to be safety concerns.
Parkhomenko: Yes, I'm worried about that because for now if you want to go to that territory, you need to go to first, Minsk, and then fly to Moscow and go through a special filtration process in Moscow, where they check your background, your social media, whom you support, and if they find out that you support Ukraine and you wrote something against Russia, they may send you back or they may put you in prison even.
Symonds: Do you still have hope or is it a little bit mixed or what are your baseline feelings at this moment?
Parkhomenko: I think my feelings are quite mixed. I still have some hope that there will be peace in Ukraine one day and the war will be over because people are very stressed and exhausted. But at the same time, I'm not sure how good it will be for Ukraine and how much Ukraine would need to sacrifice for that peace.
Symonds: We have seen Trump parrot the kind of information they're now forcing your family to believe. I mean, we've seen him say, Ukraine started the war, refusing to condemn Russia for their invasion of Ukraine. I hate to keep asking you how you feel about certain things, but obviously your family's there. So the only real question I can keep asking is how do you feel? I mean, how do you make sense of it?
Parkhomenko: It doesn't make sense to me, honestly, because it's not true. Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, and Russia continues to attack our cities, kill people every day. I don't know why the president says that, honestly, but we have the facts, and it's true that Russia committed a lot of crimes in my country, and they continue to kill and oppress people. And unfortunately, nobody talks enough about the occupied territories.
Parkhomenko summed up the experience of Ukrainians like this:
Parkhomenko: Like, can you just imagine living in the country like knowing that this government is killing your countrymen, right? Like they're destroying your cities, but you have to live in this country and follow their rules and live under their rule. I just cannot imagine that. It's very difficult and people suffer a lot.
Symonds: There are glimmers of hope in in these current times. I mean, Europe has still stood strong with Ukraine, has pushed back against a lot of what Trump is saying. Does that give you any hope at all or is you still have your European allies?
Parkhomenko: I believe that Europe is becoming stronger because it's also their interest. Ukraine is in the middle of Europe and Ukraine is not just defending itself. It's defending Europe, democracy, human rights as well. And I also believe that the US government cannot just stay away from that. I believe that the US government is also interested in helping Ukraine and Europe because we are all connected. We are Western allies, so we should defend democracy all together.
Symonds: You talk about defending it all together. I mean currently in the negotiations, so far it's just the US and Russia in these negotiations. I mean how — I keep going back to how does that feel, but I mean that's really all I can ask.
Parkhomenko: Ukraine should be definitely included in the negotiations because we are being invaded and we are suffering, and Russia is our enemy. They're killing us. They want to destroy our country. So it doesn't make sense to me to cooperate with Russia.
Parkhomenko is the Ukrainian response intake coordinator with Catholic Charities of New York. In this role, she helps Ukrainian immigrants in the United States. But this work is funded by the federal government, so Trump's funding freeze has thrown a wrench in their operations.
Parkhomenko: We are running out of resources unfortunately, because it's a non-profit organization refugee resettlement. It's currently paused and I don't know for how long. But fortunately, I can still do my work, we still serve clients but we just cannot do more new enrollments.
Symonds: You work with Ukrainians, you help Ukrainians. I don't know if you've heard from other Ukrainians that you work, talk and interact with about how they feel about what's going on currently.
Parkhomenko: I would say people are very anxious and scared, especially those who stay as refugees in the US. They are completely lost and shocked. They don't know what to do next because they left everything behind and like staying here in the U.S. They work responsibly, they pay taxes, they have legal documents, but they're going through a very difficult time that for example their re-parole has not been approved yet, and people just live in a lot of uncertainty. They don't know what tomorrow brings.
Symonds: Are you saying that some of them fear not being able to stay in the U.S. and possibly being deported?
Parkhomenko: Some people like Ukrainian refugees came to the US on a special parole, United for Ukraine program, that was launched by Biden three years ago. And people have this status that is called UHP, Ukrainian Humanitarian Parole status, and you have to renew it every two years. But people who applied for the extension of their parole status, like some of them cannot get that extension because the Trump's administration paused it.
Michael Symonds reports for WMUK through the Report for America national service program.
