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The War in Ukraine, Year 2: As Seen Through the Perspective of CDU Professor of Medicine Dr. Victor Chaban( continued)
Many people left Ukraine, with three to five million fleeing to one country, Poland. 200,000 have been relocated in the United States. Sometimes they go to a community, and I can see this new immigrant population. It’ s so sad to me, that they are from my native country. I’ ve been here since’ 96, for 27 years. I’ ve never seen such a flow of humans from Eastern Europe. So dramatic.
As specifically related to health care, they still have the international support of humanitarian medical aid to Ukraine, but I have no idea how it is being distributed. I was involved in conversations with Cedars Sinai Hospital, and LA County Hospital where a couple of my friends work. They specifically asked for supplies to be sent to the combat zone for fresh wound healing, and other materials which they didn’ t have early on. And now it looks like the situation will get better. Even Russians admit that medical aid for the Ukrainian army is the way better than in their country.
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Ukrainians have developed a different mentality during the war. They’ ve put aside all personal problems and are mainly talking about the core issue of our armies.
Last question, Victor. Why do you think the Ukrainian people recognized after a few days of resistance, that there was opportunity for them to look at this in a much bigger perspective: Russia was just going to come in, they’ re going to dominate, and it’ s going to be a very, very different life under Russia once again. Why do you think Ukrainians were successful once these first few days of Putin’ s boasting proved fruitless? Why do you think that the people mobilize in such a strong way?
Russia has miscalculated big time. First of all, the Ukrainians were not the same people as they perceived. Second, certainly years of independence gives people a sense of freedom and progress based on choice. Democracy was very different from what’ s going on in Russia, and our search yields so much history to learn. Our Ukraine was independent briefly after the Bolshevik Revolution, and also briefly during and after World War II.
Parts of Ukraine where I was born had never been Russian. It been had been Austria for 300 years as part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Now it’ s united Ukraine. This is a politically very smart decision because the condition of the Minsk Agreement was to divide Ukraine into autonomous regions, and leave Donbas as semi-autonomous region. Zelensky and his predecessor said, no, this is a unified country. By this time of existence, it’ s only four decades. A new independent Ukraine. They must be united in one country, it’ s so important to understand the importance for people from different parts of Ukraine. Slight accent, different culture, they maybe didn’ t like much each other but now with the invasion, everybody became very Ukrainian.
CDU College of Medicine | PG. 27