Raised in Philadelphia as a two-year-old, Sarra didn’t know of war. A smiling blonde kid in daycare unaware she was born mere kilometers from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine’s capital in 2022.
Sarra and her mother, Yulia Bihun, are among the many Ukrainians welcomed to Philadelphia early in Russia’s full-scale invasion.
As Russia’s war with Ukraine enters its third year this month, the Philadelphia region continues to welcome some of the nearly 10 million Ukrainians who’ve fled or been displaced. For Philadelphia’s Ukrainian community, one of the largest in the country, a dual reality has emerged: living in a welcoming local community that’s at times shadowed by a larger political bureaucracy holding up crucial aid to Ukraine.
A healthy three-year-old now living back in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, Sarra and her mother, along with others in the city’s Ukrainian community, were featured in a Philadelphia-produced documentary that premiered this month on Temple University’s campus. The documentary, ‘Beyond the Statistics,’ which will be screened next on March 3 at Jenkintown’s Ukrainian Educational and Cultural Center, aims to humanize the voices of newly arrived Ukrainians. Soon after the March screening, the film will become publicly available for free online.
The film’s inspiration comes from the “compassion fatigue” that Philadelphia-based producer Fernando Ramirez sees in the United States’ support of Ukraine. As the war enters its third year this month and other conflicts have grasped American attention, Ramirez sees an opportunity to dispense hope.
“The challenges in Ukraine, they’re 4600 miles away from us, but this impacts all of us,” Ramirez said. “This is a fight for democracy. Freedom. World Justice. This has significant impact.”
Ramirez, who immigrated to New Jersey and eventually Philadelphia from Colombia, worked closely on the film with Emilia Zankina, the dean of Temple University’s campus in Rome, Italy, and a Bulgarian immigrant herself. With lived experiences immigrating to Philadelphia, they both felt compelled to connect with the arriving Ukrainians as the conflict’s narrative increasingly lost hope and the war stretched on.
Ramirez and other volunteers from the film’s production team will travel to Rome next fall to screen the film on Zankina’s campus, which currently hosts 340 students, including several Ukrainians.
“I realized after we’ve made the film, now our responsibility is to get this message and this film to the masses, to as many universities and high schools as possible,” said Ramirez, who’s also the founder of the Philadelphia-based Bridges 2030, a nonprofit serving forcibly displaced communities.
“It’s a message of clarity about courage, resiliency, and determination, but it also opens up the conversation about the consequences of not supporting Ukraine.”
With a message of hope embedded in the film, Ramirez knows the conflict has long been political in America. The U.S. has sent over $75 billion in aid to Ukraine since January 2022, with an additional $60.1 billion currently held up in Washington due to spending’s ties to the southern border and Israel. That funding passed the Senate Tuesday but now faces uncertainty in the House.
“We have an election coming up so we have an opportunity over the next several months and I believe the more we do now the more we can impact November,” Ramirez said.
Ramirez’s Philadelphia-shot film is part of a broader effort to re-ignite support for Ukraine. On February 24, the two-year mark of Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, Philadelphia’s UECC will send buses to Washington, D.C. for a rally at the Lincoln Memorial.
“This is a dangerous political game, we need to talk to the people, it’s not only a Ukrainian battle,” said Mychailo Dymyd, a Philadelphia priest from Lviv, a city in western Ukraine.
Dymyd is one of Philadelphia’s Ukrainian residents who is here by choice, as he splits his time between Philly and Lviv. Dymyd, who is a priest at Philadelphia’s Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral in Northern Liberties, lost his son, Artemiy, early in the war. Before the marine reached his 30th birthday, his father recited a eulogy at his Lviv funeral.
Because of their family’s loss, Dymyd’s daughter is now finishing high school in Philadelphia. Dymyd wants Americans to know the Ukrainian fight is not just for their dignity and self-preservation, but for global democracy.
“These past two years, I don’t think our church has ever been so prominent and figured so much in the daily life of the Ukrainian community,” Dymyd said.
The Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia received more than $9 million in donations to their humanitarian aid fund from January 2022 to June 2023, with nearly half a million from the Diocese of Harrisburg. The St. Michael the Archangel parish in Jenkintown, where UECC is based, has tripled its weekly attendance since the full-scale invasion began two years ago, said Marta Rubel, the social outreach director of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia. However, the more Dymyd is in Philadelphia, he feels the parallel realities of the battle within American politics over Ukrainian aid. “This is an internal struggle,” Dymyd said.
It isn’t just the politics of the conflict Ukrainians feel in Philadelphia. Uliana Dziurakh, a member of Philadelphia’s Northern Liberties Ukrainian church, who left Kyiv a year into the invasion and has lived in Philadelphia since, has had to explain to Americans that Ukraine is a separate country from Russia.
“We needed to explain a lot of things, like about our identity,” Dziurakh said, acknowledging that most Philadelphia residents are warm and welcoming when Ukrainians arrive and now know where Ukraine is on a map.
Dziurakh isn’t alone, Rubel has been doing this for decades.
“All my life I’ve had to defend Ukraine exists,” said Rubel, a first-generation Ukrainian born in Philadelphia, who is overwhelmed with gratitude by the city’s efforts to support the Ukrainian community. “We were all watching the news, praying and hoping it wouldn’t happen, but when it did, it was like the switch was turned on [in Philadelphia.]”
While the fate of future aid from Washington to Ukraine is unknown and top of mind for local Ukrainians, Rubel says Philadelphia has consistently countered the months-long stalling with its own donations. In tandem, Mykola Dziurakh, Uliana’s husband, says Ukrainians in Philadelphia aren’t looking for handouts, but rather to exchange cultures with Americans.
“We feel like we’re at home, in our family, this is our people,” said Dziurakh, who was ordained in December 2023 at Philadelphia’s Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral.
For the last year at the Swarthmore Ukrainian Catholic church, Dziurakh has served a predominantly American congregation, leading him to wonder why the welcoming group chose this church. He’s since realized they’re simply trying to learn something new about Ukrainian culture.
Through the assistance of “Beyond the Statistics” co-producer Christy McCaffrey, owner of Be The Good Media, a Philadelphia-based film production company, members of Temple University did just that, learned more about Ukrainian culture.
As the first of a series of films featuring displaced populations by Ramirez and McCaffrey, it’s having a profound impact on McCaffrey, who’s realized Philadelphians have a lot in common with their Ukrainian neighbors. As Ukrainians continue to arrive in Philadelphia, some have reconnected with their families in Ukraine, such as Yulia and her two-year-old daughter, Sarra.
“I see so much of Yanna and Yulia in myself as a mother,” McCaffrey said. “Your innate desire to protect your children.”
