The Trump Administration will soon mark four months in office which provides an opportunity to reflect on various aspects of its approach towards Ukraine. Looking back on this period, there have been a number of outrageous and disgraceful statements and comments from the American president and his team about the situation. Among the most infamous -- calling President Zelenskyy a dictator, saying that Ukraine started the war, suggesting that Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine are voluntarily seeking to join Russia and accepting Russia’s arguments against Ukraine joining NATO.
But for me, the most offensive, personally, was a statement from Vice President J.D. Vance referring to his interaction with a Ukrainian immigrant. In a post on X on February 25th of this year, Vance recalled:
During my senate campaign in 2022, I met a Ukrainian-American man in NE Ohio. He was very angry about my views on the conflict, and my desire to bring it to a rapid close. "You are trying to abandon my country, and I don't like it." "Sir, I replied, "your country is the United States of America, and so is mine." I always found it offensive that a new immigrant to our country would be willing to use the power and influence of their new nation to settle the ethnic rivalries of the old.
Vance continued:
One of the most important parts of assimilation is seeing *your* country as the USA. It's part of the bargain: if you're welcomed into our national family, you ought to look out for the interests of the United States. I know many immigrants who have the right perspective, and I'm grateful to them. For example, I met many Ukrainian Americans during that campaign (and since) who agreed with my views, or at the very least, asked the right question: what is in the best interests of the United States?
Rather than expressing empathy for this Ukrainian-American man, who obviously was feeling great anguish over Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, Vance questioned his loyalty to America. Rather than expressing solidarity with democratic Ukraine’s struggle against autocratic Russia’s barbaric, genocidal military onslaught, Vance seemed focused on dismissing the usefulness of maintaining ties with one’s ancestral homeland. His comments lacked an appreciation for how immigrants enrich our discourse about foreign policy and America’s role as a beacon of hope for people all around the world.
So why do I find Vance’s comments regarding that campaign-trail interaction so personally offensive? I am the son of post-World War II immigrants from Ukraine. My parents arrived in the U.S. as children three-quarters of a century ago. Like many first-generation Ukrainian-Americans, I grew up in a bilingual and bicultural environment -- speaking English and Ukrainian, fully participating in American life but also immersed in various activities of our ethnic Ukrainian community in the Cleveland area. But besides enjoying Ukrainian-related activities on evenings and weekends like Ukrainian scouting, heritage school and church, my higher education and professional path led me to a career in which I was engaged in U.S.-Ukraine relations on a daily basis. I’m one of those lucky Ukrainian-Americans for whom Ukraine and U.S.-Ukraine relations were the focus of my work. With a heavy dose of inspiration, perspiration and opportunity, I turned my familiarity with and interest in my ancestral homeland into a rewarding, mission-oriented career in the Ukrainian Service of the Voice of America (VOA). Looking back, I can’t imagine doing anything more honorable and fulfilling than supporting U.S. national interests by helping Ukrainians build an independent, democratic, market-oriented country strongly allied with the United States. VOA did this by providing the audience with high-quality news and information about United States policies, the U.S.-Ukraine partnership and American society.
I’m far from the only person of Ukrainian heritage born in the West whose career was tightly intertwined with U.S.-Ukraine relations. Orest Deychakiwsky was a policy advisor at the U.S. Helsinki Commission and helped keep Ukraine in the spotlight on Capitol Hill for 35 years. Marta Zielyk was a correspondent with the Ukrainian Service of Radio Liberty and also served as a State Department interpreter, regularly providing translation for high level meetings of U.S. and Ukrainian officials, including at the presidential level. Michael Sawkiw of the Ukrainian National Information Service has been a vocal promoter of Ukrainian-community perspectives in Washington for many years. Adrian Karatnycky was the president of Freedom House and is a Ukraine expert at the Atlantic Council and the author of numerous publications about Ukraine. For a decade, Peter Fedynsky hosted Window on America, the first ever Ukrainian-language weekly TV show broadcast to Ukraine by the U.S. government. Roma Hadzewycz was the long-time editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian Weekly, an influential English-language diaspora newspaper which also reached non-Ukrainian audiences. Nadia Diuk, now deceased, was the Vice President of the National Endowment for Democracy, providing grants to many non-governmental organizations in Ukraine, thus fostering a more robust civil society sector. Marta Kolomayets, also no longer with us, was director of the Fulbright program in Kyiv, managing hundreds of U.S.-Ukraine academic exchanges. And there were many others.
So, Mr. Vance, it’s quite clear that there is a great benefit and value for the United States in appreciating, respecting and nurturing diaspora communities whose members possess unique cultural sensibilities, language skills and a passion for liberty and justice. Many previous U.S. presidents and vice-presidents have embraced the Ukrainian diaspora and Ukraine’s struggle for freedom. Don’t try to question our loyalty to the U.S. nor demonize or erase our ties to our ethnic heritage. We have a lot to offer to both the United States and our ancestral homeland.
Perhaps the real issue is that many of your policies are bad for BOTH the United States AND Ukraine and you don’t like us pointing that out. Mr. Vice President, you don’t have a monopoly on deciding or defining what is in the U.S. national interest. In case you (conveniently) missed it, recent polling shows that a majority of Americans believe that the United States should continue to support Ukraine against Russian aggression.
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