One woman told NR that her 70-year-old parents stayed in the country to defend their home.
Washington, D.C. — A small band of protesters gathered outside the Russian Embassy Thursday evening to register their anger over the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The modest, but diverse crowd — its composition ranged from “anarchist leftists” to Republican interns to Ukrainian immigrants — turned out for hours in the wet, sunless, thirty-degree weather. Moods were as varied as backgrounds. Some turned out as happy, chanting warriors, their spirit undaunted. Others were more mournful, and might have been grateful for the cover that the light rain provided for the tears forming at the corners of their eyes.
Harris Mowbray and Paul Ramey. a senior in college and recent graduate, respectively, were sober but far from despondent.
“Usually I don’t protest, but I have to support everyone,” said Mowbray, who said he has friends in both of the warring countries. Mowbray told National Review that the crowd on Thursday was smaller than the one that gathered the night before, when the invasion began, but that there had been a “perpetual protest” at the embassy ever since Russian president Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would undertake a “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Asked if he was surprised by the level of internal, civilian resistance to the Russians, Mowbray said he was not. “Americans don’t understand,” he began, “when you grow up in Eastern Europe, issues of territorial integrity are a real issue.”
Ramey’s reasons for turning out were more ideological. “I’m a strong believer in democracy. I’m a strong believer in the rights of nations to choose their own path,” he explained.
“I’m worried that this is the start to a much larger, NATO-Russia confrontation,” continued Ramey.
Alex and Ana Bykov’s eyes, meanwhile, are set not on the future, but on the war in front of them. The blue and yellow-clad couple spent the first thirty years of their lives in Ukraine — in Kyiv and two hours south of the capital city — before coming to the United States in 2016. They drove to the nation’s capital from Harrisburg, Pa. to stand outside the embassy on Thursday and planned to drive back that night — Ana would have to be up at 5 a.m. for work on Friday.
She just got back from a visit to her family and homeland last month, and told National Review that even with Russians massing forced on the border, few in the country expected an actual invasion at that point. After all, the Russians were always making threats.
“I sent her and said ‘hey, no worries, U.S. Embassy is still there, so you’re fine,'” recalled Alex, whose parents left Kyiv for safety reasons, but remain in Ukraine. So do Ana’s, despite the fact that they have green cards to enter the U.S.. They don’t want to leave their home, much to Ana’s dismay. “This is their home and they want to protect it, in their 70s,” she observed.
Asked how they’d respond to someone who argued that Ukraine is a kind of artificial nation or U.S. invention that its citizens don’t care much about, the Bykovs responded indignantly.
“Such a bastard?” started Alex, who wore a Ukrainian flag as a kind of shawl, “spit him in the face. ”
“If somebody’s saying that type of things, you can definitely say that he’s not Ukrainian. When you’re Ukrainian, you know that you’re Ukrainian,” replied Ana, who was more than a bit amused by her husband’s answer.
While they fear for their families and countrymen, they also retain hopes for the Russian people. Ana said she hoped that the “Russian population will actually see what kind of country they live in.”
“Maybe just a little bit of you know, brain thinking that if your government does things like that, it shouldn’t be like that, and be a little bit of scared about their own asses where they live,” she continued.
The Bykovs believe that even if the Russians take Kyiv and install a puppet government, there will be longstanding, fierce resistance. “The people would not consent in any way, it’s still going to be Ukraine, even if whatever he [Putin] does,” said Ana. “How my 70 year old parents acting I feel like even if you’re gonna take over the Ukraine, but it’s gonna be a lot of dead people in there.”
“It might happen that they [Russians] will get closer to Kiev and then they will try to overthrow the government.” Alex acknowledged. “But then again, what are they expecting? The people will say ‘okay, we don’t do anything.’ But every night they will get out and they burn all the armory and they will kill all the Russians they could reach.”
“People remember very good how to make a Molotov cocktail,” he added.
As for what the United States can do, the Bykovs suggested a full embargo. “You hear that Russia is a gas station with a strong army-” said Alex, before being cut off by his wife. “Let’s close the gas station,” suggested Ana.
Natalia and Anna, a mother-daughter duo, were among the mournful lot. Immigrants, they came to the U.S. in 2001 and were last in Ukraine in the summer of 2021.
“It hurts sitting at home and been doing nothing. You can’t help out in any way, but we just wanted to gather with some people, show numbers and grieve together,” explained Anna. Their family is in western Ukraine, away from the worst of the fighting, for now, but they can’t leave the country at this point.
They’re especially worried about their child-relatives. “In such a difficult time,” said Natalia, “kids can be killed.”
The pair echoed the Bykovs on the surprise of it all. “It’s always a threat, like ‘Putin’s gonna take over!’ and it never happened,” said Anna.
Now it has, though, and Ukrainians and their sympathizers are doing what they can, in the streets of Kyiv and Washington, D.C.