In Milwaukee, a city with approximately 1,500 Ukrainian-Americans, volunteers have brought American physicians and physical therapists to Ukraine to advise Ukrainian doctors and treat injured soldiers. Oleh Onyskiv emigrated from western Ukraine to Milwaukee shortly after 1991. When the Maidan protests began, Onyskiv and a few friends sent money to the Maidan volunteers. As Russia invaded Ukraine, first seizing Crimea and then starting a war in the Donbas, the Ukrainian army saw heavy losses in 2014. In August 2014, as Onyskiv and a group of friends were celebrating Ukraine’s independence day in Milwaukee, they decided to do more. Onyskiv and twenty other Ukrainian-Americans formed the Ukrainian-American Association of Wisconsin. Some members immigrated during the Soviet days, a time when mostly Russian speaking Jews were able to leave the USSR under a special refugee program, while others left during the turbulent 1990s and hail from western Ukraine and speak Ukrainian.
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Alina Polyakova: Here’s what Ukrainian-Americans are doing for Ukraine
Ukraine's Maidan revolution united Ukraine as a nation like never before, and it reinvigorated Ukrainian-American communities across the United States. While Ukrainian-Americans are well organized nationally through such organizations as the Ukrainian Congress Committee of Ukraine and in metropolitan areas with large Ukrainian communities, such as Chicago and New York, Ukrainian-Americans in smaller towns have also mobilized to help Ukraine's war efforts, humanitarian needs, and rebuild connections to an ancestral home. As in Ukraine, these efforts have brought together Ukrainian-Americans from all walks of life regardless of immigration histories, mother tongue, age, or religious identity.
