Renewed concerns for Ohioans with ties to Ukraine as JD Vance is chosen as Trump’s vice president pick

By: Karen Kasler | Statehouse News Bureau

Posted:
Saturday, July 20, 2024

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COLUMBUS, Ohio (Statehouse News Bureau) – Ohio’s junior senator, J.D. Vance, has expressed views that worry Ohioans with ties to Ukraine, saying in February 2022 that he “doesn’t really care what happens to Ukraine.” Now that former Republican President Donald Trump has chosen him as his running mate, those concerns are even more apparent.

About 100,000 Ohioans are from Ukraine or have Ukrainian roots. And they are scared, said Joe Cimperman, president and CEO of Global Cleveland, which has helped thousands of refugees resettle in Northeast Ohio.

“If people don’t think that the horrors that we’re seeing now, like the bombing of children’s hospitals, attacking people in the middle of the day, creating absolute chaos and destruction and destroying farmlands while we have food shortages — if people don’t think that this is not a page out of the history book of what Stalin did, then they’re not reading the same history book that I am,” Cimperman said.

And he said that fear and dismay also apply to anyone with ties to Eastern European countries behind the Iron Curtain.

“There is PTSD in the Slovenian, Croatian, Polish, Czechoslovakian, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Estonian communities right now because we were all under the ‘evil empire,’ as President Reagan said,” Cimperman said. “There is fear that the great Soviet empire-building machine is back.”

Cimperman said much of the federal Ukrainian aid money ends up in Ohio, where Abrams tanks and other weapons are produced in Lima.

Andy Fedynsky, director of the Ukrainian Museum Archives in Cleveland, says he hopes Vance can change his opinion of Trump because he can change his opinion of Ukraine.

“Our community has reached out to him on numerous occasions, on numerous occasions, to meet with him, to get to know us, to get our perspective, to agree or disagree,” Fedynsky said, adding that Vance has not scheduled a meeting. “We want to make sure he is armed with the facts as we see them and see if he is open to a change of heart.”

Vance’s views differ from those of his predecessor, Republican Rob Portman, who co-chaired the Senate Ukraine caucus.

“He’s been to Ukraine at least 10 times, if not more. So he’s well-informed, he knows the players, he knows what’s at stake for the United States and for the Western alliance,” Fedynsky said. “And we’re disappointed that our senator has made a 180-degree turn on that issue.”

Vance’s office declined to comment.