For Some at Darien’s Rally for Ukraine on Saturday, the War Means Family, Friends in the Lurch

For Mike Goliney, one of the 230 people who gathered Saturday outside Darien Town Hall for a “Rally for Ukraine,” every morning starts the same.

“Every morning at 5 o’clock. It’s no coffee for me. No news on television. I talk to my family,” the Norwalk resident said. They’re hunkered down in a building in Ivano-Frankivsk, in western Ukraine, ordinarily a seven-and-a-half hour drive to the Polish border.

“Yes, they are hearing sounds of war. Sirens,” he said. “They have everything in the basement there where they are. But they are staying on the first floor. It’s safer that way.” If a bomb hits the building, they don’t want to be buried in the cellar, he explained.

Goliney’s friend Viktor Lahodyuk of Stamford, also an emigre from Ukraine and also at the rally, nods in agreement.

The nonpartisan event was organized by the Action Network of Darien Democrats to focus attention on the plight of Ukraine and to provide the community with tools and resources to assist the people of Ukraine.

Lahodyuk, a carpenter, came to Connecticut about 15 years ago from Truskaves in the Lviv region, where many of his relatives still live, including his mother and siblings.

He shares the same morning ritual as Goliney with phone calls to his mom.

“I get on the phone and pray she answers. And I ask: ‘How is everything?” He’s referring to the shelling and explosions. “‘Everything’s OK,’ she says. ‘We are still alive.'”

Ukraine is seven hours ahead of Connecticut. So both men call their relatives in the pre-dawn hours, which means it’s midday in their homeland.

At the rally in Darien, some 4,600 miles from Ukraine, attendees listened to six speakers urge them to educate themselves about the Russian invasion, oppose Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brazen war against a sovereign country (an assertion echoed by Republicans and Democrats in attendance) and take action to help Ukraine.

Bishop Paul Chomnycky of the Ukrainian Catholic Diocese of Stamford had been announced as a speaker but wasn’t at the event. Speakers included Darien First Selectman Monica McNally, state Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff of Norwalk, state Rep. Terrie Wood of Darien, state Sen. Matthew Lesser of Middletown, Rabbi Jason Greenberg of Temple Shalom in Norwalk. The Rev. Ryan Fleenor, rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Darien.

McNally drew applause for her remarks. “Being a good neighbor extends beyond the house next door to us or the town next door to us or even a country that borders us,” she said. “We live in a global world. We are all neighbors. And we should all treat each other accordingly.”

“Americans and those who have chosen to live in America believe in democracy. How fortunate are we to live in a democratic country where we are able to stand together and raise our collective voices against evil. We can rally against President Putin [and] in support of Ukrainians because we have that freedom.”

McNally also urged the crowd “not to forget” about the Russian citizenry who are protesting Putin’s invasion at great personal risk. “I stand with those brave people of Russia as well.”

Many of the rally-goers wore blue-and-yellow clothing, the colors of the Ukrainian flag to show their support. They waved signs — “STOP PUTIN STOP WAR,” “Don’t Buy Putin’s Oil” with the word “OIL in red, and droplets below it in red symbolic of the bloodshed in Ukraine.

The rallygoers also praised Ukraine President Volodymur Zelensky for his determination to protect his people and warn the West that if Ukraine falls, that will not be the end of Putin’s campaign.

“Ukraine is not the end goal with Putin,” said Theresa Vogt, a member of the Darien Representative Town Meeting. “His end goal is to take back the former Soviet Union to put it back together.”

Dan Guller of Darien, who organized the rally, said that wanting to see Ukraine remain independent and free from aggression is an issue all Americans can agree on.

“It’s a helpless feeling to see people suffering and not knowing how you can help,” so the Action Network of Darien Democrats is providing rally-goers with the names of charities and their contact they can support that will provide aid.

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You can contribute online or find out more, here:

Razom || Doctors Without Borders || International Rescue Committee || Global Giving || St. Vladimir Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral on Facebook

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Guller’s own paternal grandfather, Louis Guller, and maternal grandmother, Blanche Kessler, each emigrated from Ukraine to the United States before World War I. They were both Jewish.

Any of the remaining Guller and Kessler families that remained were slaughtered during the Holocaust.

“For me, this invasion of a sovereign country is not a David versus Goliath. It’s Goliath versus an ant,” Guller said. “Yet I am also struck by the fact that Russia hasn’t rolled over Ukraine the way it expected to and the fight Ukraine has put up, and the leadership Zelensky has shown in refusing to be evacuated.”

As Russia’s war on Ukraine enters its 11th day, the Associated Press reports that the United Nations Refugee Agency states that more than 1.2 million people have fled Ukraine for neighboring countries.

With families having to split up at train stations with women and children fleeing for the border and leaving their husbands, partners and adult age sons behind, “it makes me think of the kindertransport [during the Holocaust] with families trying to evacuate their children from the war zone,” Guller said. “I can’t believe we are experiencing a war of this magnitude in the 21st century. I thought we were beyond this.”

George Lencyk, a parishioner at St. Vladimir Ukrainian Cathedral in Stamford, told the crowd that his parents came from Ukraine in the 1940s when they fled Russian occupation.

“So, history repeats itself,” Lencyk said. “Slaughtering innocent people and destroying civilian housing as well as architectural landmarks, we as a civilized 21st century democracy cannot stand by and let this genocide happen. If we do not stop Vladimir Putin here we will be facing addition possible threats to European countries.

“Putin has already threatened Sweden and Finland if they dare attempt to join the NATO alliance in order to protect themselves,” he said. “These threats are reminiscent of Hitler.”

Debbie McWorter of New Canaan, who attended the rally with her middle-school-aged children, explained that her family had only returned to Connecticut from Ukraine a couple of weeks ago after the United States’ embassy urged Americans to leave because of the impending anticipated Russian attack.

The McWorters had lived in Kyiv for four years. “It’s an amazing country, the people there are the warmest, kindest people you will ever meet.” Though McWorter has no relatives in Ukraine, she has “many loved ones.” They include her former housekeeper.

“When we knew we had to leave, we told her to please stay at our home,” McWorter said. “So, it started out that it was her and her daughter and then a neighbor. Now, there are eight people staying there, including a nine-day-old baby.

Food has become harder to get, with long lines, limited supplies and curfews, she said.

“We told them to eat whatever food we had in the refrigerator. I think there was some beets and potatoes to make borscht. And I wish, I wish that there was more food.”