Let’s open our wallets to help Lacey’s sister city provide for Ukrainian refugees

For the last several years, the mayor of Borodyanka, Ukraine has sent birthday greetings to Andy Ryder, the mayor of Lacey. The two mayors met in Lacey’s sister city in Poland. That sister city — Minsk-Mazowiecki — is also a sister city of Borodyanka.

Today, the friendships that link these three cities have become crucial to refugees from Borodyanka and other areas of Ukraine.

Borodyanka lies in ruins, its apartment buildings bombed and burned. Residents were trapped in basement shelters beneath them, but during the long month of Russian occupation, civilians were not allowed to try to rescue survivors. By the time the Ukrainian military drove out the Russians, it was too late.

The destruction in this town is, according to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, worse than in Bucha, where horrific attacks on civilians have been labeled war crimes.

Borodyanka’s Polish sister city, Minsk-Mazowiecki, mobilized early in the war to send relief supplies. Now this town of about 40,000 people is also hosting over a thousand refugees from Ukraine.

The Lacey — Minsk-Mazowiecki Sister City Association is raising money to help the helpers, who struggle to provide housing, clothing, food, schooling for children, and jobs for adult refugees.

This sister city relationship was established in 2004, stimulated by the presence of Lacey residents from Minsk-Mazowiecki. The Association’s current president, Steve Doboscz, is a retired North Thurston High School teacher whose grandparents were from Poland.

The Association has sponsored high school student, athlete and artist exchanges, including a Chopin concert by a pianist from Minsk-Mazowiecki. Mayor Andy Ryder has been there twice, and hosted his brother mayor here. The Association has showcased Polish culture at ethnic events in Lacey, and held a celebration of pierogi, the stuffed dumplings that are the national dish of Poland.

It’s a marvel of American life that we have immigrants and the descendants of immigrants from virtually every nation on earth. Our familial ties to distant homelands, along with our abundant sister city and state relationships, mean we have fewer than six degrees of separation from people all over the world — and fewer still from this dreadful war. Washington state has among the nation’s largest communities of people from Ukraine.

As a nation whose founding promise was democracy, equality and freedom, we also have a bond with nations around the world who share those values. This bond comes with both moral and existential obligations.

We are in the midst of a global contest between democracy and autocracy. Russia has invaded a sovereign nation to repudiate those values and their corollary, which is a rules-based international order. Ukraine is defending more than its own sovereignty; it is defending the existence of democracy and self-determination the world over.

We all have a stake in this fight, and an outsized personal obligation as citizens of the world’s most powerful democracy. No matter how we feel about our own nation’s flaws and divisions, we can be united in support of Ukraine’s struggle for national survival.

This will get harder in the weeks and months to come. We’re going to need to stretch our attention span, and not let our own domestic dramas drive this war off the front page.

The Atlantic reports that a photographer in Ukraine named Yana Morozova tweeted on March 24, “It’s been a month of this horrific war already, and one of my biggest fears is that the world will grow used to it, and stop caring.”

We must help allay that fear.

The Lacey – Minsk-Mazowiecki Sister City Association’s ongoing fundraising to help Ukrainian refugees is an opportunity to do that. Donations can be sent to the Lacey-Minsk-Mazowiecki Sister City Association (LMMSCA) at PO Box 5992, Lacey, WA 98509-5992.

“We have raised about $2,000 so far,” Doboscz says. “We will send a check this coming week, and we’ll keep sending checks every time we get $1,000 or so more.” They will do so for as long as it’s needed.