JENKINTOWN (Pennsylvania) — Ukrainian-American Sophika Laschchyk-Tytla can’t comprehend why her brother is planning to vote for Republican Donald Trump, given his open hostility towards continuing U.S. assistance for Ukraine.
After a series of unconvincing arguments, the Philadelphia native carried with her a campaign information kit as she canvassed the suburbs of the city with other Ukrainians who have rallied behind Democratic nominee Kamala.
In the ten days leading up to the election, a dozen people went door-to-door in Montgomery County. This is the first time that voter information in Ukrainian has been made available for one of the largest Ukrainian populations in the country. The county includes recent emigrants who did not vote from President Joe Biden’s Uniting for Ukraine parole after the full-scale invasion and thousands of others with U.S. citizenry who arrived in 1990.
Door-to-door canvassing took place in the final days of the campaign amid huge stakes, given Ukraine’s two-and-a half-year-long fight against Russia’s full invasion. Pennsylvania is the swing-state through which both candidates‘ paths to the White House appear to run.
Lashchyk Tytla told her younger brother, “I feel as if I’m trying my best to save Ukraine and the country. I can’t hear your (Trump’s) stuff,” as she left for a weekend rallying Ukrainian support to Harris.
“I don’t believe he thinks (about) Ukraine. The Ukrainians who voted for (Trump), have been listening to double-speak. And more recently, he has been really clear about his disapproval of Ukraine. So how can you say, ‘Trump will help Ukraine’, and say that he is the one who keeps Russia on their toes?”
In the final days, Vice President Harris and his team know that capturing Montgomery County will lead to capturing Pennsylvania as a whole. They need the support of Pennsylvania’s large Eastern European community. They have a higher number of votes than the crucial margin, with Biden winning the state by almost 81,000 votes to prevent Trump from re-election.
The Harris campaign is hoping that by visiting traditionally conservative Ukrainian communities and reminding them about Trump’s opposition to Ukraine’s defense of Russia in full-scale war and their support for Ukraine, the state’s Polish or Lithuanian population will also turn out to support Harris along with their Ukrainian neighbors.
Andrew Lashchyk (57), Spohika’s brother, claims to have sent thousands of dollars in support of Ukraine. He wants both a better U.S. economic situation and that Ukraine not cede any land to Russia. That’s why he will vote for Trump. He says that a Trump administration will bring an end to the war sooner.
Lashchyk, a Kyiv Independent reporter, said that “in terms of what Trump will be doing for Ukraine, there’s a lot of uncertainty. I don’t think he’ll necessarily provide weapons and assistance, but he’ll pressure (Russian president Vladimir Putin).”
“I think that Trump will negotiate a kind of end to this war. Do I believe that Ukraine will have cede some of its ground to stop the killing, probably. I’m not happy about that, but I have no other choice.”
Lashchyk believes that Harris’ campaign has not shown enough commitment to Ukraine. He considers himself to be extremely patriotic towards Ukraine and America. “If (Harris), somehow, was able to promise me another $30 billion (that would be sent to Ukraine) the day that she won office… okay, I might give my American country up for Ukraine.”
The war in Ukraine between Russia and Ukraine is one of the most contentious issues in the election on Nov. 5. Candidates’ positions are in complete opposition.
“Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda not only will increase costs for Ukrainian-Americans and strip them of their basic freedoms, but it will also place the people of Ukraine at grave risk as he sips up to Putin and threatens to cutoff support for Ukraine and abandons our friends,” Filip Jotevski wrote in a Kyiv Independent statement.
“Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda not only increases costs for Ukrainian-Americans and strips them of their basic freedoms, but it will also place the people of Ukraine at grave risk as he smooches up to Putin, threatens support for Ukraine and abandons our friends.”
Harris, who appeared alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in September, gave a glimpse of her stance regarding her support for Ukraine. She said in an interview in October that Ukraine’s hopes to join NATO are a future question, but that she wouldn’t meet with Putin without Ukraine’s participation for peace talks.
In a much-anticipated speech on the National Mall, in the shadow of White House, she said that Putin and North Korea were cheering for Trump’s victory.
Trump, who has a long history of cozying-up to Putin, has promised — with minimal details — to end the war quickly and has even blamed Zelensky of stoking Moscow’s invasion of his nation.
In the final days of the campaign, the vast differences between the candidates’ positions on Ukraine are evident. Trump is less concerned about the war in Ukraine and the large diaspora of voters. Harris’ surrogates are increasing outreach to Americans with Ukrainian roots in key swing states.
Harris’ campaign has rallied Americans with Ukrainian roots in the suburbs of Philadelphia to door knock after hiring Jotevski in September to lead national efforts to reach out to diasporas. Nearly half of Pennsylvania’s Ukrainian diaspora, which is between 100,000 and 200,000 people, lives in the area.
Jotevski stated that “While Donald Trump is cozying up to dictators such as Putin and idolizing fascists such as Hitler, Vice President Kamala will never waver in defending America’s ideals and security or the people of Ukraine.”
The Harris-canvassing Ukrainians, however, are disappointed with the diaspora’s small but passionate turnout in support of the Democratic nominee. They are concerned that many members of their community are secretly voting for Trump on domestic issues such as the economy.
“Maybe 30%-40% (of Pennsylvania’s Ukrainian community) are for Harris and (the rest), the majority is still Trump,” said Marta Fedoriw. She is a prominent member of the Ukrainian diaspora in the region.
“We know that Ukrainian Americans used to be very Republican in the past, due to the Republican Party and Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, as well as strong anti-Soviet Union feelings. But since these last elections, they have turned the Ukrainian vote (silent). They’re still voting Trump, but they don’t like talking about it.”
Fedoriw, the chair of the Return Ukraine’s Children Initiative at the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America (UNWL), has rallied the Ukrainian community in Pennsylvania to vote for Harris. This included at an event co-sponsored with the Harris campaign on Oct. 26. She says that it’s not clear why so many people in the state’s Diaspora plan to cast their votes for Trump.
She hears Ukrainians saying things like ‘Trump is an entrepreneur, we need someone tough to deal with Putin’ and he has been slowly giving support to Ukraine.
The Kyiv Independent spoke to both Trump and Harris supporters in Pennsylvania who are frustrated with the Biden Administration’s slow drip of assistance to Ukraine, which has been delayed at times and the repeated contradictions of previously declared red lines such as the delivery Western fighter jets.
Fedoriw, a Polish American, knows that the Harris campaign needs to target Eastern Europeans in order to reach the 700,000 Polish Americans living in the state.
Fedoriw said that despite widespread fears in the state’s Polish community that Putin’s sights are set beyond Ukraine. The population’s ties to Roman Catholicism are so deep, that Harris’s stance on the abortion rights is pushing some towards Trump.
Other people disagree, like Pennsylvania’s Polish American leaders who endorsed Harris when she acknowledged the community in the campaign’s sole Harris-Trump discussion.
Harris asked in the debate: “Why don’t (Trump) you tell the 800 000 Polish Americans here in Pennsylvania, how quickly you would give (Ukraine) up?”
But no diaspora is monolithic. The Harris campaign organized a Polish American tour of Pennsylvania two weeks before the election. On Oct. 26, after a rally, they took nearly a dozen Ukrainians to canvass.
Victoria Nuland was the former U.S. Alexander Vindman is the former Director for European Affairs of the U.S. National Security Council and Ambassador to NATO.
Two days later, Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman, and other Harris surrogates, told Scranton, Pennsylvania, voters that a voting for Harris and her running mate Tim Walz was a vote to continue supporting NATO and Ukraine.
Some of the passionate Ukrainians who attended the rally expressed concern that the Harris campaign may not be reaching Ukrainians who are receptive and could even be too late.
Fedoriw said that the huge voting bloc has pockets of Ukrainians who still associate Democrats as communists and, despite their hope for Ukraine’s sovereignty, can’t bring themselves to vote for Harris.
Lashchyk-Tytla from the suburbs of Philadelphia said, “It really struck me how few people there were at the rally.” The turnout was terrible (given) how many Ukrainians are here.
The Trump campaign will also spend the final stretch of its campaign in Pennsylvania, but it is more focused on reaching Blacks and spreading messages about “election credibility” than allocating resources for door-knocking.
According to leaders of the Ukrainian community, who spoke to the Kyiv independent in the final days of the campaign, if the Trump campaign is doing outreach in Pennsylvania to Eastern Europeans, it isn’t reaching Ukrainians in Philadelphia.
The Trump campaign has not responded to repeated requests to comment on its approach to reaching out to diaspora communities.
In Jenkintown, the Ukrainian heartland, just north of Philadelphia, the attendees of the St. Michael the Archangel Ukrainian Catholic Church’s last Sunday service spilled out into a dining room for a nonpartisan discussion on the importance of the election in Ukraine. Neil Makhija of the county’s Board of Elections, who improved the language accessibility of voter materials, answered questions from the two dozen attendees.
Makhija told The Kyiv Independent that “this is an existential question for Ukrainian American communities. They understand the contrast between the presidential candidates has never been clearer.”
“There are two people who support the existence of Ukraine. One is adamant that Ukraine should disappear.”
Owen Racer is a freelance journalist based in New York City. He has contributed to National Public Radio stations such as WHYY, WVXU and WWNO. Cincinnati-born, Ohio-native, Michael A. Smith, has also contributed to KFF Health News and American City Business Journals. He studied journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and economics at the University of Cincinnati. Read more
Read More @ kyivindependent.com