Area residents with close ties to Russia in Franklin and Hampshire counties are expressing great concern, but little shock, over President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade a sovereign Ukraine, causing widespread devastation and sparking Europe’s largest refugee situation since World War II.
“It’s a political power grab that is absolutely inappropriate, unacceptable, and it’s creating a humanitarian crisis,” said Moscow-born Northampton resident Marisha Marks. “I can’t get into Putin’s head … but I think he’s worried about a true democracy next door (to Russia). Ukraine was talking about joining the (European Union) and joining NATO, and Putin doesn’t like it.”
The Russian Federation had steadily massed military forces along its border with Ukraine, with troops eventually surrounding the nation on three sides, including in Belarus and in Crimea, which Russia seized and annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Russian troops launched an invasion on Feb. 24, generating international condemnation and sparking crippling economic sanctions aimed at pressuring Putin to end his war, which has forced at least 3.7 million Ukrainians to flee their home.
“It’s noticeably different from my experience,” said Marks, who along with her family immigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union in 1988, when she was 9 years old. She said her Jewish family fled political and religious persecution that is a common theme throughout Russian history and had their share of trials and tribulations before settling in Newton. Still, she said, that experience paled in comparison to what Ukrainians are experiencing now.
“In a lot of ways it was nothing like what the Ukrainian refugees are going through right now. We were on planes, we had clothing,” she recalled. “Nobody was ever shooting at me. Bombs were never falling on my house. My immediate life was never in danger.
“For (Ukrainian refugees) it’s more, ‘I just need to get out because I don’t know if my house will be standing tomorrow,’” Marks continued.
Marks, a mother of three, said she felt inspired to raise money for refugees and teamed up with her daughter, Emmy, to help hold a bake sale at Jackson Street School in Northampton, where her son attends and where Emmy graduated. Marks said she was flabbergasted by the outpouring of community support and reported the event generated $1,327.65 in one day, with the school’s parent-teacher organization chipping in an additional $250 to bring the total to $1,577.65. Marks said the money is being donated to Cash For Refugees, online at bit.ly/3qHxmHk.
The bake sale was so successful there are plans to hold more at the John F. Kennedy Middle School band concerts in Northampton, in which her daughter Elise will play, on April 5 and April 6. Also, Marks said, Emmy is working with fellow students at Stoneleigh-Burnham School in Greenfield to organize a fundraiser.
Marks said she feels compelled to assist refugees because of the kindness — including from the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston — her family received in their journey to the United States.
“I feel like the reason that I can say, ‘The rest is history,’ is because we had people who helped us,” she said.
Colrain resident Ed Wierzbowski did not grow up in Russia, though he “can’t even count” the number of times he’s been there. Through his company, Global American Television, he has worked in Russian entertainment media for 40 years. He reproduced “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” for Russian television, with Moscow replacing New York City as the series’ location. Wierzbowski explained Putin became acting president on Jan. 1, 2000, following the resignation of his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin.
“The first thing Putin did as acting president was get in a two-seater jet and be flown to (the republic of) Chechnya, where in a PR scheme (organized by Wierzbowski’s friend, Mikhail Lessin, Yeltsin’s minister of communications) … he passed out hunting knives to Russian soldiers,” Wierzbowski recalled, adding that this was a message for his troops to kill Chechens. “Putin then went on … to just smash and destroy Chechnya. Just in the same way he’s smashing and destroying Ukraine, just in the same way he destroyed Syria. So, very early on, I understood who Putin was.”
Wierzbowski explained Putin is a former agent of the KGB, a national intelligence and security agency for the Soviet Union notorious for foreign espionage and covert political intervention. Wierzbowski said the KGB maintained a kill list.
“He will not stop until he gets the people on the kill list,” he said. “Putin was very upset that (Soviet leader Mikhail) Gorbachev had split up the Soviet Union and he has never been able to stop thinking about reorganizing the countries that once were part of the Soviet Union into his new …. alternative to the United States and NATO.”
Wierzbowski said he still has many dear friends in Russia, some of whom have “drank the Kool-Aid,” meaning they have bought into Putin’s false narrative he has pumped through state media. He said many refuse to believe this is an active war, instead reciting Putin’s rhetoric that it is a “special military operation” to “denazify” Ukraine, and they are shielded from the images of hospitals and schools being bombed. Wierzbowski also said the number of Russian troop deaths in Ukraine is not being accurately reported in state media.
Wierzbowski said he believes the United States is not adequately supporting the Ukrainians.
“(Putin has) promoted it as a liberation of Ukraine. Even though they speak Russian, they’re still Ukrainians,” he said. “They’re tough cookies. They will fight to (the) death. They really will.”
Amherst resident Ignacy Gaydamovich, a cellist by profession, held a YouTube concert (bit.ly/3tzpFVj) with some friends to raise money for Ukrainian refugees via the International Rescue Committee. Tax-deductible donations can still be made. Gaydamovich has been to Ukraine several times and has a unique connection to Russia. He was born in Poland to a Russian mother, grew up in Belarus and Poland, and spoke only Russian in the home, where he also read a lot of Russian literature. He said he has always felt more Russian than Polish due to his upbringing, growing up loving the culture and music.
Gaydamovich said as independent news media have been shut down in Russia and dissidents are terrified, as they face the potential of 15 years in prison for spreading “false information,” which in reality is the truth about the war. He said a friend who works as a book publisher and was scooped up by government agents for no reason was released only after being told, “You’re on our list.” Gaydamovich said there are many theories about the logic behind Putin’s decisions, and he suggests the authoritarian leader may have started believing his own lies and propaganda.
“He’s a war criminal,” he said of Putin, likening him to dictators Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler.
Gaydamovich also said Poland is overwhelmed with the flood of refugees pouring into the country since the invasion.
His wife, Paulina Alenkina, was born in Moscow and moved to the United States as a high school junior a couple of years before Putin took power. The current situation is personal to her, as her father’s side hails from Ukraine, where he was born. She said her great-grandfather was a rabbi in Ukraine and all of her father’s grandparents were killed in World War II, presumably buried in mass graves.
“We don’t even know,” she said.
Alenkina said Ukraine is to Russia as what Florida is to Massachusetts — a popular vacation destination with good food, beautiful beaches and strong ties to its northern counterpart.
“It’s insane to even think they are at war,” she said. “It’s entirely possible that cousins could be killing each other as we speak. It’s still hard to believe, despite everything you read, but of course it’s real. It’s just tragic.”
Alenkina said, “short of psychoanalyzing a guy I don’t know,” she thinks Putin thought he would take Ukraine “with a break for lunch and a concert at the end” due to misinformation and delusion. She said he is brainwashing his entire country.
“The longer this goes on, the worse it’s going to be,” she said. “There’s nothing positive about it.”
Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 262.