Street Roots • April 17-23, 2015
News
Page 4
Boxes to the battlefields
People in Ukraine are fin d in g unexpected support from
around the globe — including Portland’s Slavic community
BY EM ILY GREEN
STAFF WRITER
n a thick Russian accent, Mikhail Mitkov-
Baklanovsky explains how the round
adhesive bandage he’s just pulled from a
cardboard box will keep a lung from
collapsing after a bullet pierces i t As he
speaks, he’s standing next to a small
mountain of medical and military supplies
he’s stockpiled in a small room off his lower-
level den. The bandage will adhere through
dirt, blood and sweat, he says, and the valve
in the center will allow the punctured lung
to breathe.
His wife, Tatyana Putra, points out that
the wound dressing they’ve purchased is
very special.
“It’s made of crab shells so it stops
bleeding — in three minutes,” she says.
Mitkov-Baklanovsky is a Russian
descendant and native of Ukraine. He
attended high school in Donetsk, a
Ukrainian city now occupied by pro-Russian
separatists that, in many areas, has been
reduced to rubble. He and his wife met
while attending college in the south of
Ukraine, arid they immigrated to Portland
with their children in 1992. He’s worked as
a software project manager, and she runs a
custom drapery shop in North Portland.
Since September, the couple have
shipped more than $100,000 worth of
medical and nonlethal military supplies from
donors in Portland to the Ukrainian army
and other groups fighting alongside it.
Volunteers in Ukraine tell them what is
needed, and then they send it — everything
from splints and bandages to a $7,500 pair
of refurbished night-vision binoculars.
Their 23-year-old son, Nick Mitkov,
contributes by spray-painting camouflage
patterns on black generic kneepads on the
front lawn of their Southwest Portland
home.
This family is not alone in its efforts. In
Portland, Vancouver and other U.S. cities
with large Slavic populations, grassroots
contributions to Ukraine have been
considerable. Locally organizers report tens
of thousands of donors.
Portland-based Medical Teams
International, in collaboration with
Ukrainian-American Cultural Association, is
shipping 28 pallets of medical supplies to
Kiev this week, including bandages,
syringes, walkers and wheelchairs, says MTI
spokeswoman Angie Allee. Many other local
supporters send individual packages directly
to friends and family.
“The old women send jars of borscht,”
Putra says.
UACA board member Tatiana Terdal says
Portland’s Ukrainian community is very
diverse, with members of different
ethnicities, first languages and faiths.
“What unites us is love of Ukraine and
support for Ukraine. Russian propaganda
has tried to portray the war in Ukraine as a
civil war rather than the war of Russian
I
PH O TO BY JOE G LO DE
M ikhail Mitkov-Baklanovsky sits at his kitchen table, discussing the conflict in his native Ukraine as his fam ily’s parrot, Tony, chirps on his
shoulder. H e and others in Portland’s Slavic community send aid to the Ukrainian army and forces fighting alongside it.
aggression,” she says. “Many of the
members of the local Ukrainian community
are first-generation Americans who grew up
during the days of the Soviet Union,
remember it well and don’t want to go back
to those days. Since most of us have close
families in Ukraine, we don’t wish the
return of the Soviet Union for them and
support their struggle for democratic
future.”
At last count, the Coalition of
Communities of Color estimated that in
2011 there were about 22,000 Slavic
immigrants — which includes Ukrainians,
Russians, Poles, Serbs, Czechs, Bosnians,
Bulgarians and Croats — in Multnomah
County.
Over a hot cup of Russian tea and a
mound of colorfully wrapped Ukrainian
candies, Mitkov-Baklanovsky expresses how
he felt he had to do something when the
conflict broke out in his homeland.
“It really scared me,” he says. “If you do
nothing, you feel much more worse than if
you do something.”
The first thing he says he did was write a
couple of songs; he’s been known to play his
guitar while the family parrot, Tony, chirps
along on his shoulder. But soon his efforts
turned to supporting the Ukrainian military.
And it hasn’t been easy. In order to get
around steep bribes charged by corrupt
Ukrainian customs agents, Mitkov-
Baklanovsky says, he’s relied on strangers
he met via Facebook to transport truckloads
of supplies from London to Kiev — a nerve
wrecking solution.
“He could not sleep that first night,”
Putra says. But to their relief, every
shipment has reached its destination thus
far.
Most of the supplies he has sent were
purchased from SAM Medical Products, a
U.S. military supplier. The company, based
in Wilsonville, has also donated free supplies
to Mitkov-Baklanovsky and offers him a
discount on items he purchases, says Corina
Bilger, SAM’s director of global sales. She
says Mitkov-Baklanovsky has bought “very
large quantities” from them.
“He is the sweetest man in the world,”
she says. “He’s practically buying our
products and then giving them away.”
Putra explains the Ukrainian army is
weak, and many fighters are volunteers.
“It’s just boys from the country. They
have no military training,” Putra says. “A lot
of casualties in Ukrainian army now is from
their own weapons.”
In addition to an ill-equipped military,
medical clinics and government agencies are
unable to properly house and care for more
than 1 million displaced Russians and
Ukrainians who have fled from war-torn
cities in the east
imitry Mishchuk’s Portland-based
nonprofit, Giving Hope, was founded in
D
2013 to create a children’s home in Ghana.
The Ukraine native says that when the
conflict broke out, he “knew the need was
great and urgent.” Giving Hope began to
collect and crowd-fund donations for the
effort. With the support of churches and
other community groups, his organization
has sent five 40-foot containers filled with
clothing, linens, toys and medical supplies to
volunteers and churches in Ukraine that are
helping the refugees. His goal is to send
eight more containers by the end of 2015.
“There are medical clinics in Ukraine that
haven’t gotten any new equipment in over
20 years,” he says.
Mishchuk says the generosity of
American churches and local businesses has
helped the effort immensely, with Bob’s Red
Mill Natural Foods donating grain and other
food, DoubleTree Central Laundry donating
a truckload of linens, and Providence
Hospital donating medical supplies and
offering financial assistance.
Small trucking company Brothers Express
hauls containers full of donated items to the
Port of Seattle for send-off, free of charge.
“It’s not only brought together the Slavic
community in Portland, Vancouver and
Ukraine; the local community is working
together more,” Mishchuk says. “Before
everyone was kind of grouped by religion
and beliefs, but now everyone — Protestant,
Catholic, Orthodox, non-believers — it’s
brought