On the other side
How a news anchor stays true to her Ukrainian roots
Dianna as a child in Plast – the Ukrainian American Scouting Organization. There are many different Ukrainian youth organizations throughout the country, they help to pass on the language and tradition for next generation immigrants // photo by Ryan Hamrick
Written by Jonathan Tall
Mariya recently started hearing the sounds of the rockets flying over her house.
The area near the city of Lviv in western Ukraine hasn’t been hit as hard by Russian artillery. But the war is never very far away, air-raid sirens are frequent no matter where someone is in the country. There’s a bomb shelter at the house she’s staying at, but her physical disabilities prevent her from climbing down the ladder to reach it.
Forced to sit still amidst the potential chaos, sirens blaring in her ears and planes flying overhead, she can only pray not to die.
Mariya is one of Dianna Hawryluk’s friends that still lives in Ukraine. They worked together in a Ukrainian resort that served as a meeting point for Ukrainian immigrants to land their first job, learn English and be a part of their own community.
Most of who Dianna knows in Ukraine are in the comparably peaceful parts of the country. But the anxiety in her voice is palpable as she describes the difficulty of getting in touch with them and hoping for good news, any news.
“I was shell shocked that it was even happening to begin with,” she said. “How have we not figured out in 2022 that invading other countries on false and baseless claims is a bad thing?”
Dianna is a news anchor at the local Bellingham station KGMI 790. Monday to Friday at 6:30, 7:30 and 8:30 a.m., she updates Whatcom County residents on world events; Ukraine has been front and center every day since February 24th.
After months of military buildup and provocations along their shared borders, Russian President Vladmir Putin announced a “special military operation” to protect Ukraine’s separatist Donbas region. The announcement was quickly followed by explosions across Ukraine in the capital of Kyiv and the eastern city of Kharkiv, as well as Russian troop movements in the southern cities of Mariupol and Odesa.
This is the continuation of a war that has lasted since 2014. During the Maidan revolution, controversial Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown after sniper fire targeting protestors triggered an uprising against him. The Russian response saw troops leave their bases in Crimea and take up positions around the peninsula, eventually annexing the territory.
Following the takeover of Crimea, Russia spent the next eight years arming and fomenting the “breakaway republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk in the eastern Donbas region. The simultaneous arming of Ukrainian militias by the U.S. created the conditions for a prolonged and bloody civil war.
“It’s always what I lead off with, because that’s the magnitude of how much I care about this story,” Dianna said. “I don’t know how to put it less graphically, but my people are dying.”
Her voice is fast-paced, clear and articulate. It seems she was born to be a news anchor — it was made for radio.
But it’s difficult to be an objective journalist considering the emotional investment with her ancestral homeland. She has to put her feelings on the backburner; the passion bottled up; the anger quelled. KGMI listeners can tune in every day but can’t imagine the turmoil. As the point of contact for people’s information, she can’t sway from how she reports, or her credibility is gone.
Dianna in her living room in front of the Ukrainian flag. The wooden sword is another memento she picked up in Lviv, the side she is holding depicts the Ukrainian coat of arms, while the back depicts Prince Sviatoslav, an important figure in early Kievan Rus history for Ukrainians // photo by Ryan Hamrick
Dianna’s grandmother Stephanie immigrated from Germany to the U.S. in 1951. Stephanie’s parents were originally from Ukraine, caught between an aggressive Nazi occupation and Russian advancement during WWII, and moved to Germany looking for work. Placed within an American safe zone, they patiently waited to be relocated to the U.S., which had the largest Ukrainian diaspora in the world outside of eastern Europe.
The Ukrainian diaspora has deep roots in both persecution and corruption. Ukraine is somewhat new as a political project, only becoming an independent country in 1991 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Ukraine’s complex democratic environment is largely due to reconciling with the introduction of its new economic and political system. There was a catastrophic economic decline immediately following the democratic transition: Serhii Plokhy documented in “The Gates of Europe” that between 1991 and 1997, Ukrainian industrial production fell by 48%, while the gross domestic product (GDP) fell 60%. Inflation was rampant, reaching 2,500% in 1992.
The eventual answer to its economic hardship was privatization. From 1994–2004, government assets and enterprises were sold off at a fraction of their value to opportunistic oligarchs. It staved off initial decline, but in return came corruption. In 2015, The Guardian called Ukraine the most corrupt nation in Europe.
Dianna’s tattoo on her back. The words are from Gwyneth Walker’s “I Thank You God” choral piece. The acorn on the hilt is for her family, as they all have acorns tattooed on them. Natural symbols are common in Ukrainian illustrations // photo by Ryan Hamrick
Dianna was born in New York but raised Ukrainian — the accent is absent, but the history and tradition remain. She still keeps in touch with those that helped form her Ukrainian identity throughout her life.
Shortly after the invasion began, Dianna’s friend Sergiy joined the Ukrainian army. She’s updated on Facebook and Russian social media outlet VKontakte of progress on the resistance, war crimes he’s witnessed and people that he’s lost.
“You hear it in the national anthem a hundred times, that we’ll lay down our body and soul. But most of the time, we actually mean it,” Dianna said.
The country is still beautiful during springtime. The city of Lviv, the historic center of the Galicia region that now divides Ukraine and Poland, has plateaus that cascade toward the east to create breathtaking vistas.
Those she knows in the area were recently convinced by friends to go outside and enjoy the spring air, sit in coffee shops and celebrate the Easter holidays. People are trapped elsewhere, but it doesn’t deter them from living.
It’s a feeling she knows well. She can remember being an anxious child, sitting in the car in front of the Hartford Capitol Building in Connecticut. She wasn’t sure why everyone she knew, her parents, friends, mentors and teachers were clad in orange and passionately yelling about events that were a world away.
Eventually joining the crowd, she began to understand their anger. In 2004, the Orange Revolution was shaking the recently independent nation of Ukraine, the protests extending from Kyiv to the diaspora throughout the world. After widespread suspicions of vote-rigging in the 2004 election, Ukrainian candidate Viktor Yanukovych was ousted after a year of protests forced a recall vote.
Dianna felt a connection with her people as they acted on their frustration — one that would stick with her for her entire life.
“This was not an issue that was just going to go away, it instilled later on that I should take a more active role instead of idealizing the past,” she said.
It almost feels routine to Ukrainians — constantly making an effort to prove they have the right to be free.
On her first day of preschool, Dianna’s mom dragged her into the classroom and had to tell the confused teacher she didn’t speak any English. She felt it was important to establish that Ukrainian foundation first, so the language didn’t die out.
Whether it was the sound of humming in the kitchen or sitting around the living room and hearing the Ukrainian lyrics fill her ears, music was always playing. It was the language that sounded like home.
She wears her vyshyvanka, the Ukrainian name for an embroidered shirt, around her apartment in Bellingham. It’s the same kind she used to wear when singing the songs passed down to her from generation to generation. The place is filled with mementos. Pictures of her days at the State University of New York at Fredonia, preserved walnut necklaces from Kyiv, traditional hand-drawn Easter eggs from the holidays.
In the middle of the living room is a Ukrainian flag covering most of the wall — so people won’t have any doubt about who she is. It shows in the tattoo of a sword that spans her back, displaying a message of strength and resilience:
“I who have died am alive again today.”