Don Masura on his visit three years ago to Kyiv, Ukraine, posing with a local guide. He said the city has a program that allows information technology students to intern as guides, showing the city to visitors.
Photo courtesy Don Masura
For one man with local ties, the photos and videos of Russia’s brutal attack on Ukraine carries a special significance.
Don Masura is a second-generation Ukrainian-American. While he was born in the U.S., raised around Detroit, he still identifies strongly with the native homeland of his grandparents.
“My grandparents immigrated to the United States,” he said last Tuesday afternoon. “Both sides of my family…from the Carpathian Mountains area of Ukraine.”
Growing up in the northern regions of the U.S., he said he had many friends who were immigrants — friends would readily identify with their Polish or Italian or Spanish ancestry. Masura, however, was not able to freely tell people he was Ukrainian.
“I was raised without being able to discuss my heritage,” he said. When he was growing up, Masura said most people in America considered Ukraine to be part of Russia, because it was under the control of the Soviet Union.
“To tell people that you were from Russia or that you were of Russian heritage…was not smart. People didn’t like Russians.” Instead, his parents told him to tell friends he was Austrian.
As he grew into adulthood and aged, Masura said he wanted to learn more about his true heritage, and three years ago he was able to finally visit Ukraine, spending time in the capitol city of Kyiv.
“It was a life-changing experience. I saw people who looked like my cousins and uncles.” Despite never having been to the nation, Masura said “everything was familiar. Ukraine itself is an absolutely gorgeous country. I stood in the central square. I could see the golden domes of the churches. There were flowers everywhere, and people were friendly and it was clean. People were happy. I can’t tell you how loving and kind everyone there was.”
Masura, a member of the Greater Mount Airy Chamber of Commerce and one of its volunteer ambassadors, is a small business owner, operating his own High Point-based consulting firm, The Threshold Performance Group. He said he it was fulfilling to finally see his family’s homeland, to connect to the people and places in Ukraine.
Now?
“To see the same streets I walked on, filled with war, breaks my heart,” he said. He also carries worry about relatives. While his immediate family is all in the United States, Masura said he has a cousin who immigrated back to the land of their ancestors, married and took up residence there.
“I’m worried about him,” he said, adding he has not been able to contact his cousin in recent days.
He does have other friends there who have sent out emails to him and others outside the country, describing what is going on.
“They talked about how it is so frightening,” he said of the emails. People there are having to go to extremes trying to stay safe.
“One example is the people are hiding underground. One said there are 1,200 people hiding in a train station underground and the only toilet facility they have is one bucket, and yet they don’t complain,” he said, expressing his admiration for the people of Ukraine. “They are finding a way…they are hungry, they are scared. Families are separated. Yet they fight, with everything they’ve got.”
While Ukraine may not be perfect, Masura said when he visited there three years ago, he spent time talking with many of the young people. He said they were happy and optimistic about their future, about Ukraine continuing to find its own identity after generations of being dominated by Russia, the former Soviet Union, and before that various empires which controlled Eastern Europe.
Some of that history, particularly recent history with Russia and the Soviet Union, is on display in the Kyiv city square.
“I went through a park that was the equivalent of the holocaust museum in Washington, D.C.,” Masura recalled. There, among memorials and museums was the story of Stalin, the Soviet Union leader, who would starve the people of Ukraine and elsewhere in his empire — just to keep them in line. Masura said there are memorials there to many people who died from Stalin’s brutal treatment.
And now, Russia is again invading its neighbor, apparently targeting both soldiers and civilians.
“They have not lost hope,” he said of the Ukrainians he is in contact with. “That’s what they need from the rest of the world, the prayers and the support so that they don’t lose hope. They have already lasted three or four days longer than everyone thought they would.”
Masura said the nation’s ability to hold off the Russian take-over has, in his opinion, given time for the U.S. and European nations to better coordinate their response. He fears, given the superior numbers of the Russian invaders, that the nation will eventually fall. That does not mean the war will be over.
“It is a culturally rich country. The people there are stubborn. They love their country in a way that is hard for us to understand, that they would line up with rocks and sticks to fight somebody to save their country.
“Depending on how it goes, it will turn into a guerrilla situation. The Russian troops don’t want to be there…there will be a lack of stability. I don’t think Russia will be able to take control over Ukraine and run it, because the people won’t allow that.”
Masura hopes sanctions and other actions by the rest of the world, combined with the dogged resistance being put up by Ukraine, will convince Russia’s Vladimir Putin the war is not worth it, that he will withdraw his troops.
Regardless of the eventual outcome, he said the response of Ukrainian residents should be a lesson to Americans.
“This is an excellent example of people who love their country. You may not always love your government but you can love your country.”