There were colorful costumes and sunflowers, exuberant dances and exotic instruments. But a dire message was behind the music and pageantry Thursday on the Morristown Green.
“It’s not just a war. This is genocide of Ukrainian people,” Roksolana Vaskul Leshchuk told hundreds who gathered at Morristown for Ukraine, a fundraiser for Ukrainian relief efforts as the Russian invasion approaches its 100th day.
Leshchuk chairs the Ukrainian American Cultural Center of New Jersey, which she said has sent 250 tons of supplies to Ukraine so far.
Ryan Dawson and his friends at the Knights of Columbus organized the event to refocus attention on the crisis.
“We’re afraid that it’s starting to wane in the news, other things are starting to get the top billing,” Dawson said. “And we want to make sure no one forgets what’s going on there. They need all the help that we can give them.”
A parade of dignitaries expressed support. Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-11th Dist.) assured the Ukrainian community “you have a lot of friends here” in the United States.
Many munitions sent to Ukraine, including the M777 howitzer, were developed at Picatinny Arsenal in Morris County, the congresswoman noted.
Solemn prayers were offered by clergy from Assumption Church, Centro Biblico, the Morristown Jewish Center and St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, and from St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church of Whippany.
Father Stepan Bilyk read aloud a young Ukrainian soldier’s wish “for a miracle,” penned days before his death this week.
Celebrating Ukrainian culture that is under siege, young members from the Iskra Dance Academy swirled and twirled in festive garb as onlookers clapped to the beat.
There was music from Morristown High School students, the Lakeland Youth Symphony, the Morris Music Men and the Huaxia Choir.
In English, popular Morristown singer Eric Hayes gave soulful renditions of Imagine and Hallelujah.
In Ukrainian, a choir from St. John the Baptist, joined by many Ukrainian Americans in the audience, sang folk tunes and patriotic songs. As the crowd lifted battery-powered candles in the dusk, sisters Kalyna and Uliana Leshchuk played stringed instruments called banduras and sang laments of soldiers saying farewell to their mothers.
It was their mother who delivered the evening’s most powerful words.
‘THIS EVIL WILL NOT STOP WITH UKRAINE’
“The Russian soldiers are not only destroying infrastructure, not only killing soldiers, but they’re killing civilians, women and small children,” said Roksolana Vaskul Leshchuk, the cultural center chairperson.
She was joined at the podium by her nieces, Marta, 14, and Yaryna, 11. They are from western Ukraine, and they are the lucky ones, their aunt said.
“They are here, they are with family, they are safe.”
Nearly 1,000 Ukrainian children have been killed or wounded, thousands more have been orphaned, and 250,000 have been forcibly deported for adoptions in Russia, where “they will be taught to hate Ukrainians,” Leshchuk said.
She remembered a childhood friend killed last week, and shared stories of a mother who lost two soldier sons on the same day, and another who dragged her 10-year-old boy to safety after she was mortally wounded during a bombing in Mariupol.
Leshchuk likened this war to the Holomodor, the systematic starvation of millions of Ukrainians by Stalin in the 1930s.
“The goal of Russia is to kill every single Ukrainian, destroy every last piece of cultural significance, every musician, every writer, every scientist, and every composer. They did this before,” said Leshchuk, an anesthesiologist.
“Russia once again is trying to destroy Ukrainian culture, history, language,” she continued, urging everyone to help “stop…this genocide” and become the voices of victims “in the mass graves of Mariupol and Bucha.”
Her speech was interrupted by the piercing sirens of fire trucks careening around the Green. She asked listeners to imagine the “sirens nonstop” in Ukrainian cities under attack.
To Americans wondering why they should care, Leshchuk warned: “This evil will not stop with Ukraine.”
Vladimir Putin’s war “is truly a threat to democracy and the entire world,” she said.
Every donation can make a difference, said Anastasia Siver, a Morristown resident whose parents’ home near Bucha was shelled by the Russians.
Siver said she starts each day texting everyone she knows in Ukraine, and panicking when anyone “takes their sweet time” responding.
“Being Ukrainian here right now means being tense all the time,” she explained. “It means that while my body might be here in this beautiful, peaceful town, my mind is always there in Ukraine for these three months.”
Siver quoted an Instagram posting by a friend who “is longing for the day when How are you? no longer means, Are you alive?
“I’m waiting for this day,” Siver added, “like every other Ukrainian.”
Donations may be made at www.morristownforukraine.com. Supplies can also be dropped off at the Ukrainian American Cultural Center at 60 N. Jefferson Road, Whippany.
Putin’s (and the Russian Federation’s) behavior exhibits nothing but greed and an attempt to remain relevant. Russia is ostensibly an energy company masquerading as a country. The invasions of Georgia (2000s) and Chechnya (1990s) were to seize access to the oil/gas/pipes from the Caspian Sea and control any new pipes that were being developed outside of Russia; all under the same guise of “freeing ethnic Russians” (Georgia and Chechnya have sizable ethnic Russian populations). Fast forward and action…the invasion of Ukraine (following its pro Western leadership) is in the same vein….control the flow of gas/oil and reserves and free ethnic Russians. If Ukraine joins NATO and provides cheap petroleum products to an energy devoid Europe, it would be bad for Russia who needs the $$$ to fund up to 1/3rd of their government spending. im not sure what the ultimate result will be, but bear in mind, Putin doesn’t fear NATO as much as he fears negative cash flow.