Volodymyr Grinchenko stays in touch with his family in Ukraine by phone. Photo by Robert Stewart/Capital News Service.
By Robert Stewart
As a chaplain providing hospice care, Volodymyr Grinchenko, is used to caring for others in very serious moments. But when he learned that Donald Trump had been elected president, he had to take care of himself first.
He sat in silence. He checked his phone, then he checked on his kids. While his son took the news in stride, he said, his daughter struggled.
“All of them were afraid,” said Grinchenko, 42. “Trump was going to win, and that means probably … Ukraine as a nation will no longer exist, that it will be given to Russia.”
The shock Grinchenko experienced is one that many Ukrainian Americans and Ukrainian expats living in Maryland feel following Election Day. Nearly three years after the Russian invasion of that country, they fear Trump’s warm regard for Russian President Vladimir Putin may portend a wavering on the American defense of Ukraine.
The U.S. has been the largest financial contributor to Ukraine during the war, in which 12,000 civilians have been killed and over 6 million refugees scattered across the globe.
For the region’s Ukrainian American community – 25,000 people living in Maryland, part of a large diaspora along the East Coast – the election results bring a dimension of deep personal anxiety.
Miles away from Hagerstown where Grinchenko is, at St. Andrew Cathedral in Silver Spring, only a few of the parishioners wanted to talk after a recent Sunday sermon.
Some wanted to drink their coffee in peace or head down to the pergola by the lake.
There, the Ukrainian church’s humanitarian center was celebrating St. Michael Day, an Orthodox end-of-harvest holiday, with home-cooked food. Piles of Halloween candy formed mountains on tables on one side of the pergola.
According to several parishioners, they had collected the candy to bag with a note from the church to send to Ukrainian children. They hope that it will reach them by Christmas, along with other supplies they’re sending.
Volunteers say that becoming active in this way has helped them find purpose while they await the new administration.
“I needed [an] outlet for my anxieties,” said one member who came to church feeling crushed by the election results. “There is no better outlet than being with like-minded people and actually doing something.”
Halyna Breslawec, a retired scientist who’s been attending St. Andrew since 1979, brought 160 pounds of candy donated by her non-Ukrainian neighbors.
“We have Republicans that are friends of mine who support Trump. We have Democrats who supported Harris,” said Breslawec. “The amount of candy that people donated was mind-boggling.”
For her, the outpouring of donations shows that Americans still care about Ukraine – even if she doesn’t understand their support for Trump and his friendliness toward Putin.
“What’s the worth of American support internationally?” she asked. “Does our word mean anything? Does our support mean anything?”
Sitting at a bench under the church’s pergola, Hanja Cherniak and Tamara Woroby spooned up a pink-purple borscht from wax-paper bowls. They talked about the state of the war. They wish things had been different in the pace of aid to Ukraine under President Joe Biden’s administration.
“Ukraine has been forced to fight the whole war with one arm, one hand tied behind the back, and they’re fighting Goliath,” said Woroby, 72, of Silver Spring.
“And they weren’t given the F-16s they need,” interjected Cherniak, 69, of Bethesda, referring to U.S. fighter jets. “Now they’ve got Koreans fighting. North Koreans.”
“Iranian drones, North Korean soldiers, Chinese money paying for his [Vladimir Putin’s] oil,” said Woroby. “and little Ukraine getting [aid] drip by drip.”
Today, what the two women are worried about is much worse.
They’re concerned that Trump’s advisers will not stand up to bad ideas and that Trump may give in to Putin’s territorial demands in Ukraine. And for Cherniak, Trump represents a type of isolationism that could have deleterious effects for Ukrainian sovereignty.
Before Cherniak excused herself to grab a hotdog, she and Woroby talked about the small sliver of hope they have for Ukraine – Trump considering his legacy.
“Giving in to Putin and letting someone know that the greatest power on Earth allowed another power to invade,” Woroby said. “Well, there goes Taiwan, too.”
Ukrainian Americans and Ukrainians are right to be nervous about a Trump administration, said Sarah Oates, a political communication and democratization expert based at the University of Maryland.
“Trump has been a big supporter of Russia and of Vladimir Putin personally,” she said, “and that’s not just unusual. That’s unprecedented for an American president.”
In 2017, CNN compiled a list of 80 times that Donald Trump commented on Putin, often admiringly.
“If you have the leader of America praising the person who’s invading your country, that’s very worrying,” said Oates.
Oates said that one hope for a positive security outcome is that Trump may see Putin’s power play in Ukraine as an opportunity to be tough.
“The far more likely outcome is that Trump will attempt to look big by brokering a peace treaty between the two countries,” she said, “and threatening Ukraine that he will withdraw support if they don’t take the terms on the table.”
Back in Hagerstown, Grinchenko said he has not done well in coping with the war. He follows the news of missile attacks, bombings and drone strikes with social media apps.
But even if he turned off social media, news of the attacks would be hard to avoid.
“I was feeding the kids dinner, and we were ready to pray,” said Grinchenko. “My phone rings, and it’s my mom.”
Grinchenko said he quickly did the math and realized it was after midnight in Ukraine. He told his kids to eat and answered the phone to hear his mother sobbing, as missiles came down on his hometown.
“The ground was like waves of the sea,” he said, “everything was rolling, so she was freaking out.”
In spite of all that he still hopes for a positive outcome as Trump begins to assemble his administration.
“I will continue to pray, probably a bit more than usual. I will continue to check with my mom because her anxiety right now is high,” he said. “She is really thinking, ‘That’s it.’”
Still, he encourages patience.
“Let’s give the man a chance,” he said. “Let’s support him as the president and let’s see what he will do.”