Ukrainian war vets to roll into town

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This article was published 06/07/2018 (2891 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A half-dozen Ukrainian war veterans and volunteers are pedalling 10,000 kilometres across North America to raise awareness about the toll of ongoing hostilities in eastern Ukraine and will make a stop Monday night in Winnipeg.

“The conflict has been going on for such a long time and the story is getting further and further from people’s attention,” said Ostap Skrypnyk with the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, the group that’s organizing a public meet-and-greet with the cyclists in a church basement in the city’s North End.

“There’s still a real war going on in eastern Ukraine,” Skrypnyk said. “People are being killed and civilians are being displaced. There’s a humanitarian crisis, and demobilized soldiers with issues that need to be addressed.”

Two of the cyclists are war veterans. Kostiantyn Samchuk from Kyiv set up fundraisers for war vets and their families, and Serhii Konoval, a doctor from Ternopil, served with a volunteer battalion in the most dangerous places in eastern Ukraine from 2014-17.

The group that left Los Angeles on May 23, will ride through 435 towns and cities in the United States and Canada before ending its journey in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 29.

“All along the way, there are Ukrainian communities they’re meeting and interacting with,” Skrypnyk said. “Because they’re biking, they have to stop someplace every night.”

The cyclists heading east recently spent time with people in Saskatchewan, he said.

“It’s having a lot of impact — more than having some speaker fly in for an hour, then go.

“Part of their mission is to try and not just talk to people in the Ukrainian community, but to bring (the issues) to the forefront.”

In Winnipeg, the public is invited to meet with the cyclists Monday at 6 p.m., at St. Mary the Protectress Ukrainian Orthodox Church (820 Burrows Ave.).

Russian aggression in Ukraine is expected to make front-page news later this month, when U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on July 16.

In recent weeks, Trump has spoken openly about readmitting Russia into the G7, the club of industrialized democracies, from which it was expelled in 2014, after Putin annexed Crimea.

Trump is expected to use the meeting to “continue to hold Russia accountable for its malign activities,” including its military incursion into Ukraine, the U.S. envoy to Moscow told the Washington Post this week.

Meanwhile, the fighting in eastern Ukraine continues, Skrypnyk said.

“There’s been a whole series of ceasefires, and they all get broken,” he said, adding, at least four Ukrainian soldiers died in the conflict in the past week.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca