Deep gratitude to Modesto for helping sister city in Ukraine
Some faraway people who have never celebrated Thanksgiving feel compelled this weekend to express thanks to those who do.
Ukrainians never could have withstood the ongoing Russian onslaught without support of freedom-loving brothers and sisters in other lands, principally the United States, said Sergei Samborski.
“This is Thanksgiving time, and I would like to somehow relay the gratitude I hear from Ukrainians every day when I talk to them,” says Samborski. He was born in Khmelnytskyi (say mel-NIT-ski), Modesto’s Ukrainian sister city. Now living in Modesto, he telephones friends, families and contacts every day in his besieged homeland, whose fighters have surprised the world with stiff and effective resistance.
“We want to thank Americans — I don’t want to say `America’ because it sounds less personal — whose help is making a tremendous difference,” Samborski continued. “They are giving Ukraine a visible, palpable opportunity and hope to survive as a nation, to have a future for our children, grandchildren and other generations.”
When Putin’s forces invaded in February, many experts predicted a quick collapse of its smaller neighbor’s army and government. Bolstered by American Stingers, Javelins and other support — including a $400 million package approved a couple of weeks ago — Ukrainian fighters have kept Russians out of the capital, Kyiv, and drove the enemy from Kherson in the south earlier this month.
How can we know that Ukraine is thankful?
Samborski knows people in Ukraine who have named newborn boys “Javelin” and girls “Javelina,” a point of trivia noted by President Biden when he toured an Alabama plant making anti-tank missiles in May.
On a more personal level, Judy, a San Luis Obispo cancer survivor in a support group attended by a relative of Samborski’s, learned that his aunt in Ukraine has cancer as well, and sends money each month for the aunt’s medication. When the aunt’s cow gave birth to a female calf, she named it Judy.
This naming-as-proof-of-gratitude fetish is “absolutely the truth,” Samborski told me. “It would be difficult to surpass reality with any science fiction or fantasy. Reality has turned out to be much more dramatic than anything you can make up.”
People in Modesto’s Ukrainian sister city were moved when sister spirits sent $75,000 from a June fundraiser in Modesto, paying for emergency generators in Khmelnytskyi hospitals.
Other locals who have provided generous ongoing donations deserve special recognition, Samborski said. They include Tom Millerman, Julia Ten Brink, Richard Anderson, Darrell Meyer, David Schmith, and Randy and Linda Barnum.
Some donations allow Samborski to directly fund the private relief efforts of a college chum, Anatoliy Vlasiuk, who wanted to join the Ukrainian army but was turned away because he’s 64.
Undeterred, Vlasiuk now drives 10 hours one way each week with goods collected from a relief center in central Ukraine to soldiers in the east who are holding off the Russians, and sometimes pushing them back. Modestans should know their generosity has helped get tourniquets, flak jackets and night-vision goggles to those in the thick of the fight, Samborski said.
Other nations have been just as steadfast with support, of course, including Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, all occupied and terrorized by Soviet forces in World War II and other conflicts. France, Denmark and Germany came later with crucial aid, Samborski said.
Faith in eventual victory picked up significantly in the summer when the United States began supplying Ukraine with coveted HIMARS, short for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System. Precision missiles launched from tanklike vehicles help Ukraine accurately reach Russian command posts and resupply chains from dozens of miles away.
No word on whether anyone has named a newborn HIMARS.
Relatives in Kyiv sought refuge in a Khmelnytskyi home Samborski owns, until the Russian retreat made it relatively safe to return to the capital city in October. Now a family with two children from the Donbas, next to Russia in the occupied east, stays in Samborski’s Khmelnytskyi home.
Still standing
The death and destruction are far from over. Ukraine still is being hammered by Russian bombardments, often aimed to take out heating and water infrastructure — strikes calculated to increase suffering.
Although an airfield near Khmelnytskyi was leveled early in the war, Modesto’s sister city escaped most of the violence because it’s in west Ukraine, far from the front. But recent shelling took out factories, Samborski said, and took Khmelnytskyi’s nuclear power station off the grid on Wednesday, according to news reports.
When I wrote about Samborski in April, he said Ukraine should not negotiate until Russia entirely withdraws. Now, with some victories under Ukraine’s belt, he is even more adamant.
“The whole idea behind bombing civilian infrastructure is to sow panic among the people so they start losing hope,” he said. “But they say, `No, we can do it. We just put on two sweaters. We shall survive, we shall overcome — not someday, but soon.’ I like their spirit.
“Meanwhile, specifically on Thanksgiving, Ukrainians thank Americans for their support and help. It is a matter of life and death.”
This story was originally published November 24, 2022 at 4:00 AM.
