Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, gets tough questions as chair of the U.S. House Select Committee on Intelligence, but the questions were especially difficult on Sunday, Aug. 21 as he engaged in a give-and-take for an hour with the board of the Ukrainian Cultural Center of Los Angeles and several Ukrainian non-profit and advocacy groups.
The cultural center in East Hollywood, housed in a still-glamorous former silent film theater, was filled with bustling staff and volunteers readying for a crowd of about 400 who would soon arrive to celebrate Ukrainian Independence Day in honor of its declaration of independence in 1991.
“You have stepped up and stepped into an important advocacy role that I suspect many of you did not envision even a year ago,” Schiff told the cultural center leaders and other groups, “but you became leaders and lifelines to those in your communities who didn’t know where to turn.”
Schiff emphasized that in Washington he is placing “specific emphasis on ensuring that every part of our intelligence committee is working in close coordination with Ukraine to bring an end to the human suffering.”
Despite his strong backing of Ukraine, Schiff got something of a grilling from the other official onstage, Dmytro Kushneruk, consul general of Ukraine based in San Francisco, who rolled out a list of needed weaponry and measures to help Ukraine win the war with Russia.
File photo: Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
While eloquently praising Schiff and the U.S., Kushneruk said Ukraine needs help “not just to defend … but to win back” areas controlled by Russia.
Several other groups put forth questions for the congressman, including Ukraine Now, Stand With Ukraine Foundation, House of Ukraine of San Diego and others.
While their issues were somber, it was also a warm and meaningful exchange. After Schiff took questions from the gathered groups, Laryssa Ivanna Reifel, president of the center, said in an interview, “We are not a refugee organization, we don’t have that skillset – we have focused for decades on Ukraine culture. But 12 days after Russia invaded, we held a solidarity event and Congressman Schiff came and met with me and the board.”
The war changed the longtime cultural center’s focus, and on Sunday the usual light-hearted singing and entertainment to honor Ukraine’s independence day was replaced with somber songs — and poetry read by refugees who have been in Southern California less than two months.
George Wyhinny, vice president of the center’s board, said in an interview, “Our citizens remember what it is like to be under tyranny, and true to the words or our national anthem, they’re fighting with their souls and their bodies, if necessary to remain free.”
Following Schiff’s departure, a crowd of about 400 showed up at the door for the day’s commemoration, and Reifel was attending to last-minute chores as she saw them streaming in. Smiling, she said, “Ukrainians were linked in before there was a LinkedIn.”
Among them was Daria Bohush, 28, who does graphic designing at Stand With Ukraine Foundation – and is part of a 50-member flash mob that supports Ukraine. “We’ve done a lot of flash mobs in Los Angeles — 50 people trying to grab attention to what’s happening in Ukraine. And we have a great choreographer.”
She says the “choreography is Ukranian,” meaning half-folk and half-modern, “and now it has spread on YouTube and other countries are organizing the same flash mob that has spread all over the world.”
As she sees it, “I’ve never had a big Ukrainian family, but I have one now.”
Walt Zozula of Tujunga, 75, is a longtime leader at the cultural center who moved to Los Angeles with his parents in 1952 after being born in a displaced persons camp in Germany in World War II. He grew up in Echo Park and remembers, “We were resilient, we were tough.”
And he still is. “As long as there is one Ukrainian alive, we will fight back,” he says. For 20 years he’s been a real estate instructor at Glendale Community College, and financial secretary of the cultural center’s board.
Beyond the horrific genocide he sees unfolding in Ukraine, he is worried about the blockade by Russia that is reducing grain shipments to Africa and other countries, saying, “What’s happening is affecting the whole world economically. … Ukraine topsoil is more than 30 feet deep, going back to prehistoric times. The world needs Ukraine.”
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Enjoying the food and talk just as the first performance got ready on the center’s silent film-era stage, was Nikol Bohach, 18, who through translator said she arrived in L.A. four months ago and hopes to find a way to help Ukraine. “My mom runs a nonprofit, Go Ukraina, with an ‘a’ not an ‘e’’ on the end and she’s trying to help a village to use water filters and build small homes.”
But there are a lot of challenges ahead, she says, and only half-kidding, she noted: “Sometimes people ask me, ‘Where is Ukraine?’”