WARSAW — A group of Ukrainian teenagers marked President Joe Biden’s arrival in Poland by joining a protest to call for NATO to intervene to stop Russian air and missile strikes against their country.
The young women protesting are a few of the millions of women and children permitted to leave Ukraine, as martial law requires their male relatives to remain at home and bombardments prevent the departure of countless others. Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that the military campaign was necessary to protect Russian-speaking people, but the aggression has prompted these Ukrainians to develop a distaste for the Russian language, anxiety about their relatives and compatriots, and disappointment with Western powers, who have not enacted a no-fly zone despite pleas from Ukraine.
“NATO should close the sky in Ukraine because for this day, Russia is still destroying Ukrainian cities and kill our people, and NATO say a lot of words, but they don’t do anything,” said Masha Bondar, a 16-year-old girl from Kyiv. “NATO should close the sky and prevent human death in Ukraine.”
INSIDE A VOLUNTEER EFFORT TO HELP UKRAINE WAR REFUGEES IN POLAND
Sonya came to the Palace of Culture and Science with her older sister, Sonya, a university student in Poland who attended the protest with her college roommate and the roommate’s mother. As they described their father’s work as a medical volunteer in Kyiv, another young Ukrainian woman, Marusya Drahomyrova, joined the throng and supplied the occasional missing word in English. Their comfort with each other belied the fact that they had never met.
“I hope I will [be their friend], because the girls here,” she said, gesturing toward Masha and Sonya, “are just wonderful.”
Ukrainian refugees sing their national anthem at a ‘close the sky’ protest in Warsaw, ahead of President Biden’s arrival pic.twitter.com/n8FG5cwtCk
— Joel Gehrke (@Joelmentum) March 25, 2022
The younger Drahomyrova had mentioned earlier in the evening that the Russian language is “offensive” to many Ukrainians because it is “the language of the aggressor.” Her mother chose to speak Ukrainian, rather than Russian, during the interview with the Washington Examiner.
“We want them to close the sky or to give us weapons, aircraft, [so] that we can do it ourselves,” Drahomyrova’s mother, Inna, told the Washington Examiner, in a video call after the protest Friday evening. “So, right now, Ukraine is very strong in their hearts, in their mind. But we don’t have the aircraft or ammunition needed.”
The United States has greater military power, the Ukrainian woman said, but less fortitude.
“America is very strong with weapons, it’s very strong with ammunition, but it’s very weak with their hearts,” the elder Drahomyrova said, pausing for her daughter to interpret her remarks into English. “It’s a strong horse, but it’s true. They can’t help us right now, other than close the sky.”
Ukraine is not a member of NATO and thus cannot invoke the Article 5 collective defense provision at the heart of the alliance. Biden and other NATO leaders have refused to impose a no-fly zone because that would require allied forces to shoot down any Russian aircraft that challenged the policy and perhaps target Russian anti-aircraft batteries lest they shoot down allied warplanes.
“We have a responsibility to ensure that this conflict does not become a full-fledged war between NATO and Russia,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters Thursday after the alliance’s heads of state met this week, explaining why the alliance will not send peacekeepers into western Ukraine. “And that is also the reason why allies have declared that we will not deploy troops on the ground in Ukraine because the only way to do that is to be prepared to engage in full conflict with Russian troops.”
Instead, U.S. and European officials have provided much of the anti-tank and anti-aircraft arsenal that Ukrainian forces have used to maul Russian supply lines and armored vehicles while rebuffing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s request that NATO allies in possession of MiG fighter jets, such as Poland, transfer the warplanes to the Ukrainian military to enhance their air power.
“We provide also lethal weapons, advanced systems, and also systems that help them to shoot down planes and attack battle tanks with anti-tank weapons, and many other types of systems including drones,” Stoltenberg said. “At the same time, we have a responsibility to prevent this conflict from becoming a full-fledged war in Europe, involving not only Ukraine and Russia, but NATO Allies and Russia. That will be more dangerous and more devastating.”
Biden’s team opposed a Polish plan to hand over more than two dozen MiGs in part because both U.S. and Polish officials worry that the gift would provoke a Russian counterstrike on Polish territory. Pentagon officials implied that the Ukrainian forces were not able to make full use of the “mission-capable aircraft” already in their possession.
“We have not seen them employing those aircraft to the extent that one might suggest,” assistant secretary of defense Mara Karlin told a Senate panel earlier this month.
The Bondars and Drahomyrovas, aghast at the Russian onslaught, are more moved by what they see and hear from their family, friends, and Ukrainian officials.
“We all are thankful for volunteers and for people in Poland who help Ukrainian citizens, because it’s really — they help a lot in every way, like by money and by giving us food, a place, clothes,” Masha said at the protest. “It’s really good for us because someone doesn’t have a piece of clothes because someone left their home when it started. So, we’re all so thankful.”
That gratitude coexists with horror at the attacks and anxiety for their relatives who remain in Ukraine. Marusya Drahomyrova said that she “just relocated [the] woman part of my family to Poland,” where she said eight of them now live in a Warsaw apartment supported by her job as a software programmer.
“I’m working remotely,” she said. “Our customers are Americans, so they still need our help.”
Sonya, in her third year studying in Poland, was able to provide a rallying point for her mother and sister. They speak with their father every day if they can.
“But it’s very stressed, because every day in different districts, they bomb our civilian houses,” Sonya said. “I’m very afraid to like to go to the social networks and see if my house [was bombed].”
She turned her thoughts to the East, where Russian forces have conducted a major bombing campaign against Mariupol, a valuable port city on the Black Sea.
“I have lots of friends from all about the Ukraine, from Mariupol,” Sonya continued. “And Mariupol is in such a blockade that it can’t be described into words. So yes, it’s very stressful, stressful for us.”
Drahomyrova said that she has an aunt in Mykolaiv, a city that Russian forces attacked unsuccessfully in their push toward Odesa. Earlier this week, a woman who managed to escape Mariupol arrived at the Polish border and connected with the Drahomyrovas on social media, the young protester said. Drahomyrova’s mother directed her from the border to a hotel in Warsaw and then to a bus bound for Paris.
“She said that the pigeons — they have fireplaces inside their … basements, and she said they were cooking pigeons there,” Maruysa said. “They don’t have any water, they don’t have anything. … She said she’d seen so many dead people, friends dying on her hands, and she can’t help them. There’s nothing that can help them, only closing the sky and getting people to know about how it’s like.”
Marusya paused and then reverted to a description she’d used multiple times: “It’s just a hell.”
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Amid the introductions, the three girls explained their instantaneous conviviality. “There’s a lot of people from all over the Ukraine,” Sonya said.
“But we’re all like brothers and sisters now,” Drahomyrova said.
“In this situation, yes,” Masha added, to which Sonya replied, “Yes, and always.”
