Ukrainian Woman Weds Chicago Fiancé Ahead Of Return Home

CHICAGO — 

When Russia invaded her home country of Ukraine, Maria decided she had to get there and help defend it — even if it meant leaving her fiancé behind in Chicago days after getting married.

Maria and her fiancé, David, married Saturday before about 20 people in the backyard of an Oak Park home — the venue offered last minute after Maria asked for advice in a neighborhood Facebook group. The couple met last year and got engaged in October.

On Monday, she plans to fly to Poland, then make her way to the Ukrainian border, ultimately aiming to volunteer to fight for her home country.

“People are running out of there and she is running in,” said a friend at the wedding, Pamela Chinchilla of Lombard.

Seven guests at the wedding brought medical supplies, masks and other items for Maria to take to Ukraine. People hugged each other, and Maria at one point spoke with family members in Odesa.

Maria, who asked that her last name not be published because she fears for her family’s safety in Ukraine and the U.S., said she lived with her parents in Kyiv until 1991 when the family moved to Poland.

For Maria, a previous marriage ended in divorce. She met her ex-husband while studying music in Austria and more than 20 years ago they moved to his hometown of Chicago — which has the second-largest Ukrainian-born population among U.S. cities.

Since the war began, she used messages and calls through Facebook to keep in touch with her parents, who have been sheltering in a parking garage during attacks on Ukraine’s largest port city of Odesa. But she said she has been unable to reach cousins in Kyiv in recent days.

Pamela Chinchilla looks through donations before Maria and David get married at a home, March 5, 2022, in Oak Park, Ill.

Three days into the invasion, Maria made up her mind to return to Ukraine, determined to find some way to be useful. She said she doesn’t have medical or military training but worries that a Russian takeover of Ukraine will embolden the country to threaten more places around the world.

“I have to go,” Maria, 44, said. “I can’t do protests or fundraising or wave flags. We’ve done this since 2015, Ukrainians, and I just can’t do it anymore.”

Her fiancé refused to stay behind despite Maria’s resistance to him accompanying her. But since David first needs to apply for a passport, she plans to leave Monday and wait in Poland before crossing the border.

“He knows how stubborn I am and knew he’d have no chance to convince me otherwise,” Maria said.

David, 42, said he feels a responsibility to do what he can to keep her safe.

“Because complacency and compliance are pretty much the same thing,” he said. “And you can only turn a blind eye to people being bullied for so long. And if it happens to them, it might be you next.”

He also asked that his last name not be published to avoid endangering Maria’s family.

Ukraine’s forces are outnumbered and outgunned, but their resistance did prevent a swift Russian victory. Ukrainian leaders called on citizens to join in guerrilla war this week as Russian forces gained ground on the coast and took over one major port city.

Associated Press reporters at the border checkpoint in Medyka in southeastern Poland found Ukrainians lining up to return from other countries in Europe in recent days in response to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s call for volunteers to come assist the country’s military.

The White House has since urged Americans not to travel to Ukraine, but Maria and David said that didn’t change their plans.

Newlywed Maria toasts with friends during her wedding ceremony at a home, March 5, 2022, in Oak Park, Ill.

The couple had planned to be married at a courthouse on March 5, a nod to Maria’s grandmother’s birthday.

After deciding they would try to reach Ukraine, they accepted the offer to hold a backyard celebration. They also asked people to purchase items needed by Ukrainian troops through an Amazon list that includes rain ponchos, medical supplies and boots rather than wedding gifts.

Maria said she’s not certain what she will have to do after arriving at the Polish border with Ukraine; friends who live near border crossings have told her it’s taking days to get through. Her parents also questioned her decision to volunteer, she said, because they don’t want to be worried about her safety on top of their own.

“If the army doesn’t take us, we’ll be as close as possible,” Maria said Wednesday. “There’s always a need for volunteers. I’m pretty strong, I’m not afraid of blood, I’m good under pressure.”

Natalia Blauvelt, a Chicago immigration attorney who has assisted dozens of clients trying to help family leave Ukraine and Russia in recent weeks, said she hasn’t heard of others seeking to get into Ukraine in order to join the country’s defense.

But she advised that anyone considering it contact the Ukrainian Embassy in the U.S. and speak with an immigration attorney to talk through plans for returning to the U.S.

Capitol Ditches Mask Requirement Ahead of State of the Union

Washington — 

Face coverings are now optional for President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address Tuesday, as Congress is lifting its mask requirement on the House floor after federal regulators eased guidelines last week in a rethinking of the nation’s strategy to adapt to living with a more manageable COVID-19.

Congress’ Office of the Attending Physician announced the policy change Sunday, lifting a requirement that has been in place for much of the past two years and had become a partisan flashpoint on Capitol Hill. The change ahead of the speech will avoid a potential disruptive display of national tensions and frustration as Biden tries to nudge the country to move beyond the pandemic.

The nation’s capital is now in an area considered low risk under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s new metrics, which place less of a focus on positive test results and more on what’s happening in community hospitals. The new system greatly changes the look of the CDC’s risk map and puts more than 70% of the U.S. population in counties where the coronavirus is posing a low or medium threat to hospitals. Healthy people in those risk areas can stop wearing masks indoors, the agency said.

Mask-wearing will still be a personal choice in Congress and special precautions will be in place for Biden’s speech, which unlike last year’s joint address will be open to all members of Congress. All attendees will be required to take a COVID-19 test before entering the chamber ahead of Biden’s address.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced initial guidelines earlier this month from the Office of the Sergeant at Arms that included a threat that violation of guidelines for social distancing and mask wearing during the event would “result in the attendee’s removal.”

The new policy eases the fears of some Biden allies who had been gearing up for potentially disruptive protests from Republicans to the policies. Some GOP lawmakers have racked up thousands of dollars in fines for violating mask-wearing mandates on the House floor.

The relaxed guidance comes as Biden aims to use his remarks to highlight the progress against COVID-19 made over the last year, including vaccinations and therapeutics, and guide the country into a “new phase” of the virus response that is not driven by emergency measures and looks more like life pre-pandemic.

Seating for Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress, last April, was capped at about 200 — about 20% of usual capacity for a presidential presentation — and White House aides fretted that a repeat would be a dissonant image from the message the president aimed to deliver to the American people.

“I think you’re going to see it look much more like a normal state of the union than the president’s joint address,” White House chief of staff Ron Klain said Saturday. “It’s going to look like the most normal thing people have seen in Washington in a long time.”

The Capitol move comes just a day before Washington’s mask mandate expires on Monday, and as a host of states and local governments have begun implementing the new CDC guidelines and lifting mask-mandates indoors and in schools.

Caseloads across the country have dropped precipitously since their early January peak, with the omicron variant proving to be less likely than earlier strains to cause death or serious illness, especially in vaccinated and boosted individuals.

Russia Continues War on Ukraine Ahead of SOTU Speech

The United Nations Security Council is set to vote Sunday for a rare emergency special session against the backdrop of Russia’s unprovoked war on Ukraine. The vote underscores White House claims of international unity in support of Ukraine and comes ahead of U.S. President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech Tuesday. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more

Anti-China Sentiment Erupts in South Korea Ahead of Vote

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — 

Animosity toward China, which has long simmered in South Korea, exploded into the open this week following a pair of controversies during the Winter Olympics in Beijing.

It began when a woman dressed in a pink hanbok, a traditional Korean dress, carried a Chinese flag while marching in the Olympics opening ceremony. Many South Koreans were outraged, seeing it as Beijing’s latest attempt to claim beloved aspects of Korean culture.

Once the competition began, things only got worse. On Monday, two South Korean short track speed skaters were disqualified for moves deemed illegal, allowing a pair of Chinese skaters to advance and eventually win gold and silver medals. South Korean media outlets echoed discontent, accusing Beijing 2022 judges of bias in favor of China.

“Just let the host country China take all the medals,” declared an article in the Seoul Sinmun newspaper, which began by repeating that sentence 11 times. SBS, a major South Korean broadcaster, aired a segment titled, Top 10 Worst Moments of Cheating by China, featuring past incidents involving Chinese athletes.

The anti-China uproar comes less than a month before a tightly contested presidential election. Both main presidential candidates have weighed in, saying the South Korean skaters were the rightful winners and that the hanbok display is the latest evidence China is engaging in cultural appropriation.

“Do not covet the culture (of others),” warned ruling party candidate Lethe Jae-myung on Facebook. In his own Facebook post, Yoon Seok-youl, the main conservative candidate, accused Beijing of a broad effort to “subjugate and incorporate Korean history into China.”

Growing animosity

The incident reflects growing animosity toward what many South Koreans feel is China’s distortion of history in order to claim South Korean culture, such as the hanbok. Recent years have also seen eruptions of nationalist-tinged anger over Chinese state media claims that kimchi, a fermented cabbage dish ubiquitous in Korea, originated in China.

Underpinning the tensions are wider concerns about China’s growing economic and military strength, and its more combative stance toward its neighbors, which analysts say is Beijing’s attempt to reassert its position as a dominant regional power.

Things were not always this tense. In 2015, only 37% of South Koreans had a negative view of China, according to data from the Pew Research Center. By 2020, that figure had more than doubled to 75%. Recent opinion polls suggest South Korean perceptions of China are now roughly equal to views about Japan, Korea’s former colonial ruler.

South Korea-China ties especially deteriorated after 2017, when Seoul installed the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense U.S. missile defense system, known as THAAD, to counter the threat posed by North Korea. Beijing objected to the deployment and waged a painful campaign of economic retaliation.

Perceptions of China have especially worsened among younger South Koreans, “who were born in a time of China’s rise and felt its overarching influence everywhere,” said Go Min-hee, who teaches political science and international relations at Seoul’s Ewha Womans University.

Complicated roots

For many South Koreans, China’s display of the hanbok dress during the Olympics opening ceremony hit a particularly sensitive nerve — although the controversy may not be immediately apparent to outside observers.

For its part, China said the hanbok display was not meant to be a statement about its cultural origins. The hanbok-clad performer, Chinese officials insisted, was only meant to represent ethnic Koreans — one of dozens of China’s ethnic minority groups featured in the parade.

Some South Koreans sympathize with that view, saying the hanbok also should belong to the Korean diaspora, including the around 2 million ethnic Koreans living in China. “What exactly was this Korean Chinese participant supposed to wear?” asked an editorial in the left-leaning Hankyoreh newspaper.

South Koreans, however, became upset in part because of China’s long-standing efforts to claim Korea’s ancient kingdoms as part of its own national history. The territory of the Korean kingdoms, known as Goguryeo and Balhae, overlap with what is now part of modern China.

From Koreans’ perspective, claiming these Korean kingdoms as a small part of a bigger and more important historical Chinese entity is extremely offensive, said Darcie Draudt, a postdoctoral fellow at the George Washington Institute of Korean Studies.

“The issue of sovereignty is at the heart of it. Korea has been ‘border insecure’ since Japan colonized it. And then it was divided, with north and south cut off. And then you must consider all the Koreans now in China, Manchuria, Russia, and elsewhere. So, then it becomes tied into national division, in a sense,” she added.

Major political issue

The Olympics controversies have become a major campaign talking point in Seoul, raising the possibility that anti-China sentiment could be exploited for political gains ahead of the March 9 vote.

Yoon, the conservative candidate, had already spoken in blunter terms about China. In December, he declared “most South Korean people, especially younger ones, do not like China.” He has also called for additional THAAD deployments in South Korea.

Lee, the ruling party candidate, says South Korea must maintain a balance in its relationship between the United States and China. But Lee too has taken a more adversarial approach toward Beijing this week, promising to “strongly crack down” on Chinese vessels fishing illegally off South Korea’s coast.

The China issue is not likely to be decisive in the South Korean election, say observers, who note that both campaigns remain focused on domestic issues.

“Over the long run, however, I think that fueling the anti-Chinese sentiment will backfire,” said Go. “The complexity of Korea-China relations will be a significant burden to the incoming administration.”