City, county officials demonstrate in solidarity
with hundreds just 4 miles from Mar-a-Lago
By PAUL BLYTHE
West Palm Beach, sitting opposite of the so-called winter White House on the Intracoastal Waterway, took a stand in solidarity with Ukraine on Sunday evening -- one of the few Sundays of this administration so far that President Donald Trump was not at Mar-a-Lago.
“On behalf of Mayor Keith James, welcome to the city of West Palm Beach once again,” Assistant City Administrator Armando Fana told the crowd of about 400 Ukrainians and Ukraine supporters gathered on the city’s Great Lawn at 100 N. Clematis St. for “Stand with Ukraine,” a three-hour rally of speeches and songs delivered in both Ukrainian and English on the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “We’ve been hosting this event for a few years, and it keeps growing bigger. And we’re very proud and honored that the Ukrainian people here in this country and in this state have chosen West Palm Beach as a place to gather for independence and freedom.”
Sponsored by Ukrainian Association of Florida
Organized by the Ukrainian Association of Florida, the event featured speakers, displays and handout literature reminding those in the crowd of the horrors that Russia continues to inflict on the people of Ukraine.
Not that most of the crowd needed a reminder. Some fled their homeland in 2022 when the invasion started or after Russia’s earlier occupation of Crimea. Others had friends and relatives who had been slain in the war or whose daily life still included bombs and shelling.
But faced with a new Trump administration that appears intent on reversing American foreign policy in the war, the association’s speakers and literature were clearly focused on getting the public’s help in persuading the United States government to continue its military and diplomatic support for repelling the Russian aggressors. They encouraged Floridians to come to Ukraine’s aid by calling the state’s U.S. Sens. Rick Scott and Ashley Moody daily with messages such as, “I am dismayed at President Trump’s statements about Ukraine and his repetition of false information on Ukraine. Support for Ukraine is a top priority for me. Please make it a top priority for you too.”
This comes about a week after Trump accused Ukraine of starting the war and called Ukraine President Volodymr Zelenskyy a dictator. He also started so-called “peace” negotiations with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin but excluded Zelenskyy from the talks.
Trump comments fed by Russian lies
Saying Trump’s recent comments and actions were heartbreaking for Ukranians, Juliette Dryhyublka, the association’s communications officer, compared Ukraine’s current status to a hypothetical one where the United States would be blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center “with the world blaming the victim and saying the victim can be blamed for being attacked. This is what Ukrainians are feeling while hearing all the statements fed by Russian propaganda and lies.”
While the Ukrainian handout material and speakers focused their attacks on Russia and always remained respectful of the United States, American speakers at the event were not always so polite.
“It is hard to understand some of the rhetoric that comes from certain people in my country,” Fana said with a pro-Ukrainian, anti-Russian, contra-Trump tone that was picked up and continued by the most of the night’s American speakers. “Let me be clear: The only dictator in this war is Vladimir Putin. (Applause.) The country that started this war is Russia. (Continuing applause.) All of us here, I’m sure, want peace, but peace has to be with justice. It has to be through strength. There has never been a time in history when peace comes through weakness and through kowtowing to dictatorships. Ukraine must be free. Ukraine needs to continue to fight as long as it can fight. The United States and its allies need to continue to support Ukraine, and the city of West Palm Beach will continue to host this event as long as it takes before Ukraine is a free, independent nation and doesn’t have to suffer this disgusting war that Russia has brought upon them.” (Thunderous applause.)
'Ukraine's fight is our fight'
Palm Beach County Commissioner Gregg Weiss upped the ante.
“I’m flat out pissed about the whisperers in Washington trying to trade Ukraine’s lifeline for mineral rights,” Weiss said in a reference to Trump and his administration’s pressure on Ukraine for its rare earth minerals in exchange for U.S. support. “Ukraine isn’t some corporate deal to haggle over. Those soldiers, they aren’t bleeding out in the mud so we can get cheaper lithium. They are fighting for the same thing that our grandparents fought for. Freedom! And they’re dying for it.”
Weiss, a Democrat, continued, “Ukraine’s fight is our fight. Every Russian tank that is blown to hell by Ukranian soldiers is one less tank that is going to thunder into Poland or the Baltics tomorrow. Every warship for Russia that is sent to the bottom of the Black Sea is a loud warning to anybody thinking about Taiwan. Ukraine isn’t just defending its own soil. It is holding up the whole damn system that has kept the world from spiraling into chaos since 1945.”
Without mentioning Trump or the U.S. by name, Weiss also opposed a pending U.S. resolution before the United Nations that would urge an end of the war without naming Russia as the aggressor or acknowledging Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
U.S. joins Russia, opposes Ukraine in U.N. vote
“Then there’s the UN proposal that won’t even call Russia the bad guy. It’s not just spineless. It’s a green light for trouble,” he said. “Picture this. Think about after Pearl Harbor if the world started saying, ‘Oh this is just tensions in the Pacific,’ instead of pointing at Japan and saying, ‘You did this.’ History is clear. Dancing around the truth simply emboldens these bullies and dictators.”
(The day after the West Palm Beach event, the U.N. General Assembly rejected the U.S. motion even after several amendments were passed to strengthen the language against Russia and affirm Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Because of those amendments, the U.S. abstained from the vote on its own resolution. The General Assembly then passed a Ukrainian- and European-backed resolution that condemned Russia for its “full-scale invasion of Ukraine” and called for a de-escalation of hostilities by Russia. The U.S. joined Russia to vote against that resolution.)
'It is a genocidal war'
Without referring to the U.N. resolutions, John Vsetecka, a professor of Ukrainian history at Nova University in Fort Lauderdale who lived and worked in Ukraine, explained why condemnation of Russia is well-deserved and why American and world support for Ukraine is so important.
“This war has been awful, and it’s not just a war,” he said. “It is a genocidal war… I research and write professionally about Ukraine. I write about the Holodomor, another genocidal act by Russia that it continues to deny (a famine orchestrated by the Soviet Union that killed millions of people in 1932-33)….Right now, Ukraine faces an extreme uphill battle. We are living in a new age of dictators. I should know. I study this for a living. We have to resist. Our politicians right now are banking on apathy. They want us to forget. They want us to get tired. They want us to lose the importance of Ukraine. But living and working in Ukraine for more than 10 years, what I know is that Ukrainians won’t settle for that. Ukrainians are leading the world to resistance. They have a military that is so capable of so many things, and we have so much to learn from them. I was just in Ukraine not too many months ago. I was in places like Bucha. I saw the aftermath of what genocide looks like. I’ve seen shelled houses. I’ve talked to families who have lost their children. I’ve talked to husbands who have lost their wives, and to wives who have lost their husbands. This is a historic moment. It is a time we have to grieve. We have to feel sorrow. But we also have to have hope – nadia. We have to keep going.”
Vsetecka then offered words of advice for how to keep going that seemed to apply to the fight ahead in the U.S. as well as the one in Ukraine.
“What I want to encourage all of us to do is to make sure that we’re not apathetic. Do not obey in advance. Do not appease the politicians. Keep supporting Ukraine. Keep donating to the Ukranian army. Keep supporting them in whatever ways you can. I really hope that we are here next year to celebrate the end of the war, but if we have to be here again next year to support the ongoing war and our strength for Ukraine, then so be it, we’ll be here.”
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