By Cecilia Nasmith/Today’s Northumberland
It’s too bad it took such a brutal invasion and so many deaths for the world to realize what Russia is capable of – but amid all the worry about her family, a Ukrainian-born Colborne resident is at least glad that the true face of Vladimir Putin has been shown.
Twenty-six-year-old Vladimira Garmazonova-Knott (her unusual name was chosen to honour her late grandfather, but she’s known as Mira) met her husband Ethan Knott of Cobourg at an Etobicoke Bible college called Catch the Fire School of Ministry.
It was one where her father, a Christian minister, had wanted her to go, one her older sister had gone to before her. She ended up staying on as an intern in their creative production department, where she learned the trades of photography and graphic design.
A June 17, 2017, wedding date was set. Because they were going to live in Canada, they decided to have their wedding at her home in Kyiv, a beautiful tract of land that had been in her family for generations (except for the piece the Soviets decided they wanted 40 years ago and expropriated for themselves).
It was exactly the wedding her father wanted – he’s a big fan of the Steve Martin film Father of the Bride, she said.
“My dad is a lot like Steve Martin – very funny, a sweet person.”
Leafing through her wedding photos, she looks again at the beloved house and the beautiful field with its trees and river – and some trenches that were dug during World War II. She points to the part of the land that the Russians recently bombed.
She identifies the joyful people in the photos – the English, Canadian and American friends in attendance, her parents, the aunt who helped raise her, her beloved grandmother, her older sister with her two children, her 17-year-old sister, and her two brothers aged 24 and 15.
With not only the distance but the pandemic as well, she said wistfully that she had only been able to visit home twice since then.
“It’s much harder for them to get here than it is for me. That’s why my husband and I were always trying to go over for Christmas and summer. I haven’t seen them for almost three years now.”
Sitting in her comfortable home, she finds it hard to live with the knowledge of how hard things are in Ukraine.
“I could never really explain it to anyone here. Now it all blew up in our face, but we have always known there is a threat.”
“It’s a complicated history, and no one really cared about that before,” she said.
Ukraine was a sovereign country with its own ancient culture and history long before it became part of the Soviet Union, she said.
“The Soviets tramped on our history and on our culture. It’s really beautiful, but no one really cared about it.”
One sad coincidence is that Mira first came to Canada in 2014, the year the tension finally boiled over in Ukraine, the beginning of a war that has persisted on its eastern border and the loss of Crimea.
“I remember calling my mother to see how things were going. She said, ‘The Russians are coming and the tanks are here.”
“Ever since then, our life has never really been unstable.”
Ukraine’s president at the time was a person she termed “Putin’s little pet,” and the people were fed up enough to protest. The president started shooting them. In the years since, they have worked on ridding the country of Putin’s pets, purged corrupt influences, changed the police system – a country rebuilding itself. And they dared to hope Putin would not touch Kyiv.
“He thinks he has the right to our land because it was never ours to begin with. He thinks Lenin, one of the heads of the Soviet Union, created Ukraine, which is very, very untrue and historically incorrect. Technically, Kiev is older than Moscow. He just has an imperial claim to our land because he thinks he is denazifying us. He calls our people radical nationalists and Nazis, when that is not true.
“We have always wanted to be our own thing, and he doesn’t like that.”
And he certainly didn’t like the democratic election of President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“Now there’s a little Ukrainian Jewish guy kicking his ass, and he doesn’t like it,” Mira said with a quiet smile.
“It’s impossible to believe, even now, that it’s happening. I can’t wrap my head around it.”
“The first four or five days were like days of impossible decisions. We didn’t think he would go this far.”
“Did I know? No.”
“Did I worry? Yes.”
“I am talking to my parents every day. Everybody was stressed, but nobody knew it was coming. Did we know my parents were going to have to leave everything behind that they worked for all their lives, and run? No, we didn’t.”
“The first two days, they thought they just needed to sit it out somewhere. He will act up, show his muscle and go away. It was unbelievable to think he would dare go after Ukraine.”
“In a matter of hours, not even days, they realized they were running out of their country, out of their home, and there was no way they saw it coming.”
“My parents made a plan to go to the western side of Ukraine to try to sit it out. But things were escalating really fast, and they realized they would have to run out of the country.”
They made it to Hungary with six family members, among them her teenaged brother and sister. Her older brother stayed behind to take care of their grandmother, who is not mobile.
“I try not to think about it too much, but I call him every day to check up on him,” she said.
“I have friends in bomb shelters and volunteering in the worst places. Every day I message them and ask if they are still alive.”
She was able to talk to her aunt, who was at one point staying in the ancestral home that had been theirs for generations. She heard explosions on the other end, and her aunt acknowledged at least one had fallen not far from their property.
Along with her calls, much of each day is spent watching the news – then she sees the horror that has befallen her people and has to stop.
“I need to know what’s going on, but I am trying to focus my energy on taking care of my family right now.
“We always dreamed of bringing my family here for a vacation, but never to rescue them from an evil that has been spread over my home,” she reflected.
Her heart breaks to think of the family members who are not with her parents – her aunt, her brother, her grandmother, her sister’s mother-in-law.
“We haven’t talked about it yet. I don’t want them to feel like they were left behind,” she said.
“We didn’t split up like this on purpose, but we didn’t know it was going to be this bad. The goal was to get the little children out, my younger siblings, my sister’s children. Right now, to Russians, it doesn’t matter if you are a child or a soldier – they shoot you.”
The haste with which they left means they did not take enough. All her mother packed was two pairs of pants. She has seen her sister in the same T-shirt a few times, but is grateful she was able to grab her Canada Goose coat because of the bitter-cold winter weather.
“The biggest part of my family got out, and I am thankful they are alive and somewhat safe, but they don’t feel safe where they are. I am trying to get them to me,” she said.
“We can’t quite yet sigh with relief. While they were running to the border, it was like hell, it was like nothing they had experienced before. They are so exhausted.”
“Even though they are alive right now, they should be recovering but they have no option to stop and rest and recover. They are going to keep running until they get here, basically. It has been very hard for them, and their health has been quite compromised. I have been worried sick about it, praying and praying.”
One thing is clear – her family wants to leave Europe.
“They don’t really belong there, and there’s too much pain. Here they have me, and I am their family and I can take care of them.”
It’s going to cost everything she can pull together to cover this effort, from the plane tickets for eight to the living expenses once they get here. But Mira is giving it all she has and all she can manage to get in donations.
“That is something I never thought I would ask,” she said.
“Me nor my family ever asked for help. We were the ones that gave help. My dad is a pastor at a church and my mom has a small Christian school that is providing education for people. Now they don’t have anything. Now they have lost everything, and I am asking everything for them.”
Mira finds being so far away from her family is the worst part.
“It’s like watching someone you love being tortured, and your hands are tied and you can’t do anything about it,” she said.
One thing that helps is being able to pour all her time and energy into the immigration process.
“I haven’t slept or eaten because I am doing that and collecting money and talking to them. Somehow, I haven’t had the time for anything else. It’s very difficult doing that from across the world,” she said.
She is working from a country where you can send a simple e-transfer in the blink of an eye, where you can count on being able to access health care and enjoy so many kinds of support you may not even be aware of them all, to help family members in a country where things are basically the opposite.
Given its position as the country that stands between Europe and Russia – basically between East and West – Ukraine’s history has been difficult. The Germans had their time trampling on its soil, followed by the Soviet Union.
“We know no one’s coming for help, and that is the saddest thing ever. Ukraine is on its own to defend itself.”
“But I am not saying Ukraine is not strong. It’s strong, and we have had many men come back from other countries, Ukrainians who live outside of the country, come back and fight.”
Mira gives President Zelensky a lot of credit. He was liked well enough before, but he has gained a vast new measure of respect with his courage since the war began.
“Now he’s the best person ever, for sure – the Jewish guy with iron balls,” she said.
“Ukraine will kick some ass, for sure. But if Putin pulls the nuclear button, no one can be safe. And that’s part of the reason my family doesn’t feel safe in Europe anymore,” she said.
“We didn’t think he would go after Kiev, so why should we think he won’t pull the button.”
Asked if she had a message, she thought briefly.
“Ukraine has been defending the comfortable Western life for many times, and this is another time she is doing that. I just want the world to be aware that, while you are comfortable in your home, there are people that are dying and holding off the biggest monster there is right now, and they should be thankful and they should be praying and looking into ways to help.”
“I have been a good resident of this country, this place, and my family really needs help, and I need my community to back me up and help me to bring them here and take care of them.”
“Canada is all about taking care of immigrants. Most Canadians are born out of someone who was running from a war, and right now it’s time for my generation and my community to stand up and take care of those people who are running from the war again. I need your help, my neighbours – please.”
For anyone who wishes to donate https://www.givesendgo.com/G2WE7
