How can you help people in Ukraine from California? A Ukrainian lawmaker has some ideas
Oleksandra Ustinova — who has been a member of the Ukrainian parliament for almost three years — was visiting her husband in Texas, where he is based, when Russia began its invasion of Ukraine.
Ustinova, a former anti-corruption activist, quickly flew to Washington D.C. to advocate for help for the country.
“I know a lot of decisions, unfortunately, regarding the lives of Ukrainians are taken here,” she said of the United States’ Capitol. “How strong the sanctions are going to be, how strong the response to what Putin is doing is going to be, is directly aligned with how many people die in Ukraine.”
The Sacramento Bee spoke with Ustinova on March 3, 2021, offering her views on how people in California and across the United States can help Ukraine from afar. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What is happening in Ukraine?
“Lately, Putin has gone nuts. The first few days, he was shooting military bases and infrastructure. Airports were destroyed. Bridges are blown out. Main roads are totally destroyed. I cannot imagine how long and how expensive it’s going to take to fix this disaster, because the country lies in ruins.
In the last few days, Putin started targeting the civilian population. He’s doing it on purpose, to make the Ukrainian government negotiate. The more deaths — and we already have more than 2,000 people killed, including children — the sooner he thinks we will.
It is difficult to call this a negotiation because it’s blackmailing us with people’s lives. His main demands have not changed since the invasion. His demands are to give up the occupied territories, which is questionable because now half of Ukraine is occupied. Second is demilitarization: I can hardly imagine this now because we hadn’t provoked him, but he still invaded.
He demands for the neutral status for NATO — which is something he just came up with, because in 2014 we were a neutral country, but he still invaded the Donbas and Ukrainian Peninsula. The last and the most crazy, I would say, demand is ‘denazification.’ He says all Ukrainians are Nazis. He’s the one shooting bombs at Holocaust museums but he’s calling Ukrainians Nazis.
How can people in California and the U.S. help people in Ukraine?
“So far, everything that has been done by the United States’ government and governments all over the world is because people made them do that.
For the first 48 hours of the invasion, there was no reaction. There were some words of support, but no extras. When people started going out on the streets, that’s what made the government do something. An example: Germany was the one blocking all the sanctions and said they’re not going to support us with any weapons. After 100,000 people went out on the streets of Berlin, the German government changed their mind.
When Ukraine gave up our nuclear weapons, we were promised by the three biggest and strongest countries in the world, I would say — the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia — that in if anything, because we gave up our nuclear weapons and we don’t have protection, they would step in. The government keeps pretending it never happened.
Only people going out in the streets, protesting, would maybe make the government go ahead with stronger actions.
What I would ask Americans to do is to show their support and push for the government, the administration and Congress for stronger actions and stronger sanctions. Going out on the streets and talking out loud makes a difference. Writing letters to your members of Congress makes a difference because they then know that this is what their voters think, and that’s what’s pushing them to change their attitude.
How can the U.S. government help Ukraine?
“When I heard President Biden’s speech at the State of the Union, I heard him say a few important, and telling, things. One of them was, ‘we’ve done what we could’ and ‘we are there for strong sanctions.’
He calls strong sanctions against the Russian economy sanctions on all markets but the energy market, which is the main income for Putin. We should totally ban buying oil and buying gas from Russia. If we don’t stop U.S. Dollars and Euros from going into their economy, we basically wouldn’t stop the war because, by paying for that, we are supporting the war.
Second, we need to get Putin and their banking system totally isolated from the whole world. We’ve been told, and that’s what the president was saying, that we switched off SWIFT for Russia. Well, he forgot to mention that they switched off SWIFT, which is the international transfer system, for seven banks out of 100. You can just transfer the accounts to another bank.
We’ve been told that they will sanction the oligarchs. The majority of the Russian oligarchs had been sanctioned in 2014 or 2018, which means some of their accounts are frozen. Or their expensive mansions and villas and yachts are under arrest. But they’re still using it. They cannot sell it, but they can still use it in many circumstances. We need to take it from them. We need to send every kid of the oligarchs out of the United States, out of the UK, out of the EU, because they all live abroad. Like mansions in California, Miami; apartments in New York.
The most important thing that I would ask Americans is to ask the government to stop this mass murder and 24/7 public execution of Ukrainians by closing the sky.
We never ask, and can never ask, the American or NATO or British soldiers to come fight for us on land. We have already proven that we can stand up against one of the biggest armies and fight for our freedom. But unfortunately, we are not protected in the air. We had more than 480 missiles already shot at Ukraine. In the first days, Putin was shooting at the military bases. Now he’s shooting residential areas, children’s hospitals, orphanages, maternity hospitals. The biggest hospital for kids with cancer in Ukraine was bombed, children died.
That’s why we keep asking the international community for the so-called no-fly zone or for the special system which is called the Iron Dome, which means you have the air defense system that shuts down the missiles coming into your country. That’s what Israel used against Hamas. The UK has this technology.
If Ukraine goes down, it is going to ruin world order, because it would prove democracy and the Western world has lost to one crazy psycho who is bullying everybody about having nuclear weapons or a strong army. He can do whatever he wants to do. He can commit a genocide of over 40 million people in front of the international community and people would sit there watching, not doing anything, if there is no strong response to Putin, if he doesn’t get punched. And he hasn’t been punched.
We have more than 90 countries that are in support of Ukraine. That means that Putin can call Macron (of France) and threaten him or Biden and threaten him. It’s something you wouldn’t expect in the 21st century, but we see this happening. Until there is strong action from the international community and total support — no matter how high the gas prices would be — nothing is going to change.
How can people in California or elsewhere help refugees?
“A friend of mine from California posted a picture with his sister: He flew to Poland, on the border of Ukraine, and she brought kids. She gave the kids to him and said she was coming back to Ukraine to fight. Eighty days ago, could we imagine? People bringing children to the border and going back to fight for their country?
What people can do is send humanitarian aid.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult right now to evacuate people from already-occupied territories of Ukraine. Russians circle the cities to not let anybody go out. We can not organize so-called safe corridors: We had a safe corridor in 2014 for Ukrainian soldiers. They were negotiated with the Russians. This time, the minute they stepped in that corridor, they were shot at .... Even if you negotiate these corridors, how can we be sure that Putin keeps his word?
I have a lot of friends who live in the United States now who donate or buy the necessary medical kits that we’re running out of and ship them to Ukraine. We ship them to Poland, then they’re picked up by Ukrainian drivers and delivered. Bulletproof vests — my friends in California from the Silicon Valley, if you bought 100 bulletproof vests, which are very expensive, ship them to Poland. They will be picked up and save somebody.
Unfortunately, we are not talking about refugees to other countries. So far, it’s mainly been Poland. We need to support Poland in taking our citizens and helping them. I’m very grateful to the Polish citizens who, from what I’ve been told, literally welcome people at the border with hot tea because people are standing for hours in the cold weather.
We need basic food now. An example is companies like McDonald’s and KFC are feeding the Ukrainian army for free now — delivering food, Big Macs.
It is very important in California now, especially in Silicon Valley, to advocate for businesses to stop working in Russia. As long as big businesses like Apple or Google pay taxes there, taxes go for the Russian army. Netflix: they need to shut it off in Russia or broadcast what’s really happening. Let people watch, because some Russians truly believe they’re fighting in the east of Ukraine with Nazis. They don’t realize they’re coming here and killing children on the streets.”
This story was originally published March 6, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
