EDITORS/NEWS DIRECTORS:
Evidence of torture and killings that has emerged in recent days from a town outside Ukraine's capital has touched off worldwide condemnation and calls for a war crimes investigation of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his invading forces.
Videos and images of charred bodies of unarmed civilians in the streets of Bucha after it was recaptured from Russian forces have unleashed a wave of indignation among Western allies, who have drawn up new sanctions as a response. Even China called the reports “deeply disturbing,” though it cautioned against assigning blame until the facts are known.
Russia drew fresh condemnation Friday after Ukrainian authorities said a missile struck a train station packed with fleeing civilians, killing 0 evacuees. Russia's Defense Ministry denied targeting the crowded station, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Putin's forces of “cynically destroying the civilian population.”
The stark imagery from Ukraine — dead bodies bound, tortured and burned; body bags piled in trenches; lifeless limbs protruding from hastily dug graves — is deeply jarring and difficult to view. But it's brought the misery of the conflict into the American consciousness.
With emotions running so high, talking to ordinary Americans — and particularly those with ties to Ukraine or Russia, or those from other countries with brutal personal experience with war crimes — could produce rich and compelling lines of local reporting.
Here are some ways to localize coverage of the growing outrage over atrocities alleged by Ukraine and its Western allies. Local stories could run alongside the AP story EU—Russia-Ukraine-War and other spot coverage:
HOW TO FIND UKRAINIAN AMERICANS
America is home to an estimated 1 million people who claim Ukrainian ancestry, and there are sizable U.S. enclaves of immigrants from the former Soviet republic.
The largest of those is the New York City metropolitan area with about 83,000. Other cities with notable numbers of Ukrainian diaspora include Chicago with 26,000; Seattle with 21,000; Sacramento with 18,000; and Los Angeles with 17,000.
In percentage terms, the Sacramento metro area leads the U.S. with Ukrainian Americans comprising 0.8% of its population. Portland, Oregon, and Seattle follow with Ukrainians making up 0.5% of those cities’ total populations.
RUSSIANS IN THE U.S.
New York City also is home to the United States' largest Russian expatriate community, with an estimated 600,000 living in the city and up to 1.6 million in the tri-state area that includes Connecticut and New Jersey. Many live in Brooklyn's Brighton Beach neighborhood, nicknamed “Little Odesa,” which also has a large ethnic Ukrainian population.
Los Angeles, Chicago, Greater Boston, San Diego, Sacramento, San Francisco and Miami all have sizeable ethnic Russian communities, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
HELPFUL RESOURCES
To determine how many Ukrainians and Russians are in your state or metropolitan area, go to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute’s analysis of census data: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/us-immigration-trends. See links under “Immigrants’ Countries and Regions of Birth.” Select Ukraine or Russia from the dropdown box and do the same for other nationalities with Temporary Protected Status and for those that advocates are pushing for. (Source: Migration Policy Institute, based on census data.)
Official information on Temporary Protected Status from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services: https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/temporary-protected-status
The Congressional Research Service, which authors reports requested by members of Congress, published this useful guide on Temporary Protected Status, including historical background and information on specific countries: https://sgp.fas.org/crs/homesec/RS20844.pdf
To find people, search for Ukrainian or Russian churches or civic organizations and visit communities where Ukrainians and Russians are known to live. Search for immigration lawyers with Ukrainian or Russian clientele, perhaps by contacting the American Immigration Lawyers Association or their local chapter.
Questions to ask:
— What's going through your mind as you see the horrors playing out in your homeland?
— Do you have family or friends in Ukraine? If so, and you've been able to communicate with them, what are they seeing and experiencing?
— What do they think about the international community's response so far, which has been largely confined to sanctions against Russia? Do they think the U.S. and other nations should be doing more? If so, what, exactly?
OTHER ETHNIC COMMUNITIES TO TALK TO
Sadly, Ukraine is just the latest country to suffer atrocities during wartime. The list of nations that have witnessed war crimes in the 20th and early 21st centuries is depressingly long.
Consider seeking out people with ties to Bosnia, where former strongman Slobodan Milosevic's forces committed genocide and crimes against humanity during Yugoslavia's bloody breakup in the 1990s.
Immigrants who fled bloodshed in Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia during the 1960s and 1970s — such as Cambodians who came to America to escape the fearsome Khmer Rouge — could also have compelling stories.
More recently, members of China's beleaguered Uyghur minority who've sought refuge in the U.S. would have unique insights into the torture they may have witnessed or experienced themselves. So would anyone with ties to Myanmar's years-long genocidal repression of Rohingya Muslims.
Questions to ask:
— To what degree is it triggering to you to see the troubling imagery out of Ukraine? Do you find yourself reliving what you and your loved ones endured in your homeland?
— In many instances of war crimes around the world, the U.S. and other nations were late to intervene, if they intervened at all. How do you feel about the measured response so far to Russia's bloodletting in Ukraine?
— What if any role do you think the United Nations ought to play in Ukraine?
