People wave the Canadian and Ukrainian flags as they rally on Parliament Hill to mark the 3rd anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in Ottawa on Feb. 23.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Lesia Hnatiw, a retired postal worker in Yukon, felt overwhelmed and angry. She took a Ukrainian flag on a pole, and stood outside a federal building in Whitehorse, where she lives.
First she was out alone in a Yukon winter, before being joined by another man who bought fabric and sewed a Ukrainian flag, and then by other members of the community. They eventually created the Ukrainian Canadian Association of Yukon.
The war in Ukraine has long been a concern for members of Canada’s Ukrainian community, but they say their feelings have become more complicated with the recent fight between U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Ms. Hnatiw says she has advice for those people: In November, she took a trip to the front in Ukraine with supplies for troops. “Right now, when it feels like people are riding that roller coaster of emotions, and it’s like, ‘Oh my God. What are we going to do?’ You know what? Find an organization. Do the work,” she said.
Ihor Michalchyshyn, chief executive officer of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, calls the conduct of the Trump administration “horrifying and reprehensible.”
He said in a statement that U.S. moves to cut off military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine while making unilateral concessions to Russia are complicating Ukraine’s efforts to defend itself.
Analysis: Ukraine is in a far better position today than when war with Russia broke out in 2022
Canadians, in general, have looked on with concern. But anxiety over the disputes has been particularly acute for members of the Ukrainian community, both long-standing residents of Canada, and those who have moved to this country, taking shelter here while the war has been underway. Since the start of the war, about 300,000 Ukrainians have settled in Canada.
Asked earlier this week how he would describe the mood in the community, Yaroslav Baran, a member of the board of the Canada-Ukraine Foundation, described a mix of shock, disgust and anger at the conduct of the White House.
“Distilled out of those three is a renewed resolve to remain resilient,” said Mr. Baran, who ran communications for the federal Conservative Party through election campaigns in 2004, 2006 and 2008.
“People have been writing letters and people have been posting on social media. People have been organizing rallies all over the country,” he said, praising the support provided by the federal government. “The government of Canada has been saying the right things on this.”
In Vancouver, Svitlana Kominko, who moved to Canada from Ukraine 20 years ago, says members of the Ukrainian community are feeling “very stressed” about the disrespect that the Trump administration is showing to Ukrainian leadership.
But they are forging on with a program of activism. “We are transforming our pain, our disappointment, into action,” said Ms. Kominko, a psychologist and co-founder of the Maple Hope Foundation, launched by members of Vancouver’s Ukrainian community in 2014.
That includes raising money, doing advocacy work and holding rallies, including one at the U.S. consulate last weekend.
Of Mr. Trump and Ukraine, Ms. Kominko says: “It’s like a fast train you cannot stop and you cannot jump out of. I would like to jump out, to some quiet island and live peacefully there.”
Walter Palagniuk moved from Ukraine to Canada in 2014. An assistant to Manitoba Conservative MP Larry Maguire, he is looking to run for the party’s nomination in Toronto’s Etobicoke-Lakeshore, where he worked and lived in his first five years in the country, to give back to his adopted home.
His daily routine is to check the news about Ukraine every morning and to reach out to make sure his parents back home are safe and okay. “They’re good,” he said Wednesday when asked how they were doing.
At the beginning of the war, he worried about Kyiv falling to Russia. Now, however, he is concerned that Russia has a strategic reason to be seeking a ceasefire. They are, he feels, looking for an opportunity to rethink their military strategy, and resume the war at some point.
Should that come to pass, he fears a loss of Ukrainian lives, a possible eventual Russian attack on a NATO ally or an effort to provoke a conflict in the Arctic.
“It feels like Americans don’t understand this. They play their own domestic politics and it feels like they don’t realize how dangerous Russians are and could be in the future,” he said.
Mr. Palagniuk said he is not alone in this concern, noting it is widely felt in the Ukrainian community in Canada. “That’s what I hear from Ukrainian Canadians.”