Ukrainian diplomats continued their goal to connect with Arizonans— one visit at a time with an open forum on Friday in partnership with the ASU School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership (SCETL), the McCain Institute at ASU, Phoenix Committee on Foreign Relations and the Cactus and Tryzub organization of Ukraine and Arizonans.

The forum called Securing Tomorrow Together: Fostering Lasting Support for Ukraine in the U.S. hosted a question and answer event at the Marston Exploration Theater at ASU attended by students, faculty and the public at large. 

Three members of the Ukrainian parliament shared personal stories and offered answers on why the U.S. needs to continue their support for Ukraine.

Oleksandr Kovalchuk, a member of the Parliament of Ukraine and father of four spoke on the impact the war has had on his children. “They are praying to God every night, before the dinner, and you know it’s difficult to tell about the war that they are seeing.”

The Ukrainian diplomats told students and members of the public that Ukraine stands for freedom just as the U.S. does, and if Russia succeeds taking over Ukraine—any democracy is in danger—the aggression will only move on to neighboring NATO countries and beyond. 

Currently at least 10,000 civilians have been killed, including more than 560 children, since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Another member of the Parliament of Ukraine Olena Khomenko said to the attendees, “Behind every figure there is a tragedy. There is human pain. There is a broken life.”

Khomenko cited an example and with obvious care and emotion explained to the audience that her country and its citizens completely understand the issues that are most important to Americans because Ukraine had similar issues before their country was attacked. 

“I’d like to share my feedback, I heard from my colleague who returned from the U.S., they had a visit months ago. And they were advocating for support to Ukraine with the congressmen, and one representative said “My voters, they just don’t understand this and it’s so far away this war—they just need a new school bus for children.”

“But our children are dying,” Khomenko said to those at the forum, “That’s why we ask you to help us.”

Dylan Marks a student at ASU studying finance was alerted to the forum from his class “Internal Politics and Ethics.” 

“I have been doing varsity debate for three years—we had no idea this forum was going on. My debate partner and I heard about it in the class for extra credit points, but I mean, that’s the beauty of this because I wanted to come here first and foremost because we have talked about these topics in our free time and in our debates—like why do we (Americans) need Ukraine to really pull through and win this war—this is huge, and I mean to see that these people want to come here and speak to Americans. If Ukraine falls what happens?” Marks said.

Mariia Mezentseva, Ukrainian Parliament Member, Chairwoman of Ukrainian Delegation to the Council of Europe and member of EU and NATO integration spoke passionately of her personal experience since the war began, “I am a member all the way from Kharkiv, which is 40 kilometers away from the Russian border. Sometimes I observe Soviet rockets hitting the city, that’s not normal and that’s not funny at all.”

Mezentseva addressed the question of whether Ukraine has lost some support since Ukraine was attacked and how some in Congress are actively moving against support.

“It’s not the case that support from the American people has gone down—we have to tackle disinformation and of course Russia is very jealous of any U.S. support for Ukraine, if we do not prevent aggression by Russia it will have a massive impact on America—so this is also a question of national security for the U.S. supporting Ukraine,” Mezentseva said.

“And not only U.S. interests—but global security leader’s interests are in place—so we are not losing the American people’s support, because in fact you are sending weapons produced in the U.S.—jobs are being created in the U.S. and Arizona is a most impressive case where we have a coalition of military producers—this clearly proves how this boosts your economy—this is our homework to deliver this message here today and as long as it takes.”

America—explained Mezentseva, is not “sending checks” as some might say, as this will only confuse and misinform the public.

“America is actually creating jobs by producing weapons and other tools necessary for Ukraine’s success in the war against Russian aggression. Our values are the same—our country will progress only because of the EU and the U.S. and their anticorruption efforts,” Mezentseva said.

Another ASU student and debate member, Nate Lahy, told Northeast Valley News that authoritative leaders that go unchallenged will not be in the best interest of America.

“Well, you can look at what happened in Georgia with Russia’s invasion and Crimea, it’s very clear that they want to take more land back and want to build a block against NATO and really, as they talked about it in this panel—appeasing authoritative leaders does not work, has never worked in the past and it’s not going to work now.”

“It’s in the U.S. interest to make sure that Ukraine can protect itself against Putin and Russia because they are not going to stop there, they really had no justifiable reason to invade Ukraine and they’re not going to have justifiable reasons to invade Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and they’re going to keep moving and keep exerting their power until someone comes in and really stops it—so now is the chance for us to push back,” Lahy said.