Ukrainian immigrants in Clark County fear for homeland

VANCOUVER, Wash. – As the Russian government moves into Ukraine, local Ukrainian immigrants fear for the freedoms of their friends and family.

“Every one of us does have a connection with our relatives,” Paul Demyanik said. “We know truth not from the television or internet; we are calling and writing to our relatives.”

Demyanik’s wife talked to a family member in Ukraine just two days ago. He told her of the companies and embassies fleeing eastern Ukraine.

“It’s big pressure, especially for the kids, because all the news said was ‘be ready,’ ” Demyanik said.

He’s heard other stories of older Ukrainians promising to stay in their homes.

“Freedom costs, and we will pay that cost,” Demyanik’s heard the older generations say.

“We are praying for them,” he said.

Demyanik is the pastor at the Ukrainian Baptist Church in Vancouver. His church opened in 1997 to help the Ukrainian community.

“Many other people came from the Ukraine, and we got a church to help them to know what to do and how to start a new life in the United States,” Demyanik said.

Now the congregation has more than 200 adults and children. Some came to the area after the fall of the Soviet Union. Some, like Demyanik and his family, immigrated as the Soviet Union collapsed.

Demyanik was born and raised in a small city in the southwest of Ukraine. He grew up in a Christian family and finished school while the country was still part of the Soviet Union.

His parents were persecuted all the time, he said.

His mother was hired to be a typist. But often, when her employer discovered she was a Christian, she lost her job. The same happened to Demyanik’s father, who was persecuted by the KGB, the former Russian secret police and intelligence agency. Demyanik’s father raised him to listen to the Voice of America radio service.

“If I want to know a truth, I should listen to the Voice of America,” Demyanik recalls his father saying, adding his father taught him that Russian media was “fake.”

Demyanik told a story of buying train tickets for a man who wanted to go to the place where two Christian brothers were being imprisoned. Buying train tickets in the Soviet Union was difficult, but Demyanik knew a way. The two men met for Demyanik to hand off the tickets. They’d only discussed the arrangement previously on the phone.

They interrogated him about the call and who he bought the tickets for. “That was in 1985.”

The KGB threatened to send people to Siberia, the pastor said. Demyanik knew people who were sent there.

“It’s the reason why our people are so afraid. Because Putin brings that style of life.”