Sioux Falls residents with ties to Ukraine offer look at life under siege

The fierce resistance that Ukrainians have shown fighting Russian aggression toward their homeland surprised Alla Kureninova — and leaves her completely unsurprised.

“I knew we had it in us to fight,” said Kureninova, who emigrated from Ukraine to the Sioux Falls area 10 years ago. “We knew the giant we had to resist. That’s scary in its own, the sheer amount of people it could send. I am very proud of (Ukraine), how fierce and supportive they’ve been to each other. If anything good comes out of it, this is it. People realizing they can come together, and they can do anything.”

Regina Dumansky Brunz’s cousin and family currently are bunkered in the basement of her Kyiv, Ukraine, apartment

Estimates of Ukrainian Americans living in or near Sioux Falls vary, from a couple of thousand to upward of 4,000 people. Some have lived here for decades, fleeing their homeland for religious freedom or economic opportunities.

The strong support being shown for Ukraine since war with Russia began last week has been heartening, Ukrainian Americans said. It’s a bright candle burning for people who otherwise spend their days worrying about family and friends thousands of miles away, who are seeking shelter from bombs, hearing the shrill warning of sirens, worrying already about food shortages.

Here are four stories from Sioux Falls about the impact the situation is having.

‘Already used to war’

Alla Kureninova checks the news about every 30 minutes, just for updates on the situation in Ukraine.

“You want to know exactly what’s happening,” said Kureninova, who left her home country in 2012 for an internship that turned into a profession and full-time job. “Good or bad, you want to know exactly what’s happening.”

Her parents, two sisters, their husbands and their children — a daughter for one sister, a son for the other — remain in Ukraine. Sometimes they tell Kureninova she will not hear from them for a while.

“There’s no cell service in the basements” where her family goes to seek shelter, she said. Her family lives in Sumy in eastern Ukraine where there is active fighting on the border.

Alla Kureninova

Kureninova can communicate with her family often, and they don’t always focus on what is taking place outside. Instead, they share pictures of the children — Kureninova and her husband, Mike Bujoreanu, a native of Maldova, have one son — and tell lighthearted stories that ease the strain.

“When you look at our chatter, there’s a lot of war information but also a lot of family,” Kureninova said. “We want to be distracted.”

Yet amid the distractions, fear always lurks in the shadows. And distress. And anger.

“It shouldn’t be happening,” Kureninova protested in futile dismay. “And it’s just so sad how used they are to it already. Nobody should be getting used to war in a matter of five days.”

Alla Kureninova and her family

Every Ukrainian has had a different experience. Among the extended family and college friends Kureninova checks in with, she knows Ukrainians who are actively volunteering in the resistance. Others have hunkered down, sheltering in place. Some left within 30 minutes of the first missile attack and now are refugees in Poland and Moldova.

“Whoever you check in with has a different story,” Kureninova said.

Since Ukrainian Americans in Sioux Falls have no organized community, other than several churches, Kureninova worries that some might feel isolated during this time. She has been active on Facebook, and she wants others to know she is a safe space to talk about feelings and emotions.

“People here are going through something too,” she said. “It’s going to take time to recover from it. It’s going to change us forever. I just hope for the better.”

Some Ukrainian Americans feel a sense of guilt from being away from their country of origin, watching the war from their comfortable homes and offices. Kureninova’s friends tell her not to feel that way. “My Ukrainian friends in the fight, they tell me ‘Thank you for sharing,’ and that gave me confidence,” she said.

She urges Americans to contribute financially to war relief efforts, after research first to make sure their money is going to a reputable organization. Similarly, she asks that misinformation not be shared. Kureninova wants people to contact elected leaders from the city up to the federal level to support humanitarian efforts.

“We’re not going to demand anything because we recognize the dangers of this to the world,” she said. “But we don’t want to be forgotten.”

‘Little David going up against Goliath’

Bill Dumansky grew up up in Khmelnitsky, Ukraine, and later moved to the outskirts of Kyiv, but what should have been a peaceful childhood was disrupted by religious persecution. That’s why he left his country, then under Soviet rule, at the age of 28 and moved to Sioux Falls with his wife and two children.

Enhancing his desire to worship as he wanted was an adventurous streak, he acknowledged this week.

“I was seeking adventure and going someplace,” Dumansky said.

Despite challenges both related and unrelated to being a refugee, Dumansky can say with conviction, “I’m proud to be an American.”

Bill Dumansky

And now he adds, “And in times of war like this, I’m proud to be a Ukrainian as well.”

As a Sioux Falls resident for 32 years, Dumansky now describes himself as one of the “old folks” in the Ukrainian American community. He can’t get rid of his accent, he said. But it hasn’t hindered him in his work as a software engineer. Dumansky, who is remarried, now is father to five children with five grandchildren.

The wave of Ukrainian immigrants has slowed in recent years, but they have made and continue to make their mark on Sioux Falls, Dumansky said. He estimates the city now is home to 2,000 to 3,000 former Ukrainians. Three Ukrainian churches have been established, and while there is no store that sells only Ukrainian goods, European markets carry products from that country.

Dumansky expects another wave of immigrants will seek new homes in the United States and elsewhere after the war comes to an end. If the U.S. government permits them to move here, he said older immigrants like himself will be willing to open their doors to the newcomers.

Elizabeth Dumansky and her father, Bill Dumansky, standing in Kyiv’s central square, the Square of Independence, several years ago.

First, however, the war must end. Dumansky sees it as a conflict similar to the biblical story of young David, a future king, facing the hulking Goliath with nothing but a slingshot. He believes the weapon of prayer has helped the tiny Ukrainian army hold off the mighty Russian forces.

“Little David has been able to hold his own against giant Goliath,” Dumansky said.

Despite his prayers and his confidence, Dumansky is going through his days with a heavy heart.

“It’s hard to concentrate on my work,” he said. “I want to know what’s happening there, but the more news I get, the more frustrated and helpless I feel. Probably the biggest thing is the frustration and anxiety as the bombs are raining over the cities, the streets over which I walked and landmarks that I used to take my kids to. The biggest part is that people are dying for nothing — the ambition of one maniac from the Kremlin.”

Dumansky’s family members in Ukraine include an older brother, nieces and nephews, their children and his cousins and second cousins. Most of them live elsewhere than the capital city. He spends as much time as he can with his family in Sioux Falls, including sisters, nieces, brother-in-law, son-in-law, grandchildren and daughter Regina, who was born in Ukraine.

His church family at Sioux Falls First also is supportive. On Sunday, he stood before the congregation as a representative of Ukraine, and the people prayed for him and those facing war.

Dumansky asks for continued prayers. He also hopes his fellow Americans talk to their representatives at the national level to make sure the country continues to support Ukraine.

‘Pray’

Maria Brower has seen Sioux Falls’ namesake falls lighted up in the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag and the downtown Arc of Dreams similarly aglow. That’s when she knows the residents of her current homeland will not forget the residents of her former homeland.

There is one thing she asks from her new countrymen: pray.

“I don’t know what else can help my family except prayers,” Brower said. “We do help financially as much as we can. They’re suffering and do not have food enough. There are empty stores in cities, and a baby has been delivered in a subway underground. It breaks my heart, especially in the capital city of Kyiv where people sit in shelters downtown, there is shooting all over and emergency sirens every day all day.”

Kenny and Maria Brower with Isaac, 6, and Levi, 5

Brower came to Sioux Falls in 2003 when she was 24 years old and remaining in Ukraine meant meager opportunity for employment. Her parents also lived in Sioux Falls for a year and then returned to their small village. They still reside there, and she knows they’ll never leave again.

“We invite my parents that we can take them here,” Brower said. “Or I tell my parents, if you want to move, move to Poland. My dad don’t want to. He’s 85, and he just answer me, ‘God protected me until I’m 85; I’m going to stay here.’ ”

Her mother maintains a positive attitude. She told her daughter: “I get up in the morning thankful for the night. I live through the day, I’m thankful for the day.”

Brower herself is facing sleepless nights worrying about her family and friends. Her brother told her he doesn’t want to live anywhere else and intends to fight for his country. A close friend with a husband in the military also told Brower she will not go anywhere else.

So Brower wakes up in the Sioux Falls home she shares with her husband, Kenny, and their two sons, Isaac and Levi, and worries. She goes to her part-time cleaning job and worries. She goes to bed worrying.

She sees the same stress on the faces of other Ukrainian Americans.

“People probably have less smiles, more crying,” she said. “When somebody starts talking about their parents and relatives, I’m emotional. I can cry. It seem as if life stop for me. I cannot think clearly. Sometimes I do not have enough attention for my kids. Most of my mind right now is in Ukraine.”

If anything about the Ukraine’s response to Russia in the past week has filled her with joy, it’s how younger people have reacted, Brower said.

“People want to fight, even girls,” she said. “My generation of people, you never see war before. And comparing Russia to Ukraine, we are a very small country, when you think reality. It’s like everybody knows they can die any day, any time. But they just go.”

‘It feels like a person in our lives is under attack’

You can call Daniel Brunz “Ukrainian by marriage.”

Fourteen years ago, he married Regina Dumansky, who was 2 years old when she emigrated from Ukraine to the United States, settling in Sioux Falls with her father, Bill Dumansky, her mother, the late Larisa Dumansky, and her older sister, Kristina.

The couple had met as high school students, and in the years since then, Brunz has embraced the culture of his wife’s family. He feels closely connected to Ukraine because it’s the heritage of his wife and children and their shared relationships with family and friends in both countries.

Daniel and Regina Brunz with their children, Samuel, 10, and Emersyn, 6

That’s why seeing the country under attack is so excruciatingly painful.

“After the freedom they have experienced the last 30 years, the country itself is like a character in our story; it feels like a person in our lives is under attack,” Brunz said. “It’s been comforting that Ukraine has been a better place over the last  30 years, and you didn’t feel as sad. Now the family is in danger. There’s this sense of tearing, the heart to want to help, the sense of powerlessness.”

Daniel and Regina Brunz gather most evenings with her family, where there is a sense of mourning, he said. They shed tears as they share texts and videos of Ukrainian family hiding in bunkers. Male family members are taking up arms, and wives and children are being separated from their husbands and fathers. Brunz described it as a multidimensional trauma.

Regina in Independence Square in 2018

The Brunz parents also must look out for their two children’s well-being. They are age 10 and 6, and Samuel, the older, has visited Ukraine to meet his great-grandmother.

“They know she is in danger,” Brunz said. “Their identity is Ukrainian, and they’re very Ukrainian in customs and tradition. They feel it. They’re sad, and they said they’ve broken down in school crying. It’s been hard to see. We try to filter as much as we can.”

Regina’s cousin Lora’s daughter, Erica, is praying for her father. He had sent a photo to let them know he was safe.

Brunz is a broker associate with Keller Williams Realty and a pastor with City Church. He has spent weeks visiting his wife’s family in Ukraine, and he, too, must deal with images of adults and children in terror, hiding in basements and random cellars.

While grateful for the sanctions that the United States and other countries have imposed on the aggressor Russia, Brunz wishes the government had moved faster and more broadly.

“Everything has been done strategically rather than for humanitarian reasons,” he said. “I think most Americans would gladly pay $10 a gallon for world peace and for superpowers like Russia to know this is a backwards type of behavior.”

Peace vigil Sunday

South Dakota Voices for Peace and Ukrainian Americans in Sioux Falls will host In Unity, an outdoor vigil at 2 p.m. Sunday on First Congregational United Church of Christ Church property at 12th Street and Minnesota Avenue.

The vigil will show solidarity and support of the local Ukrainian community. This will be an opportunity to hear stories and pray for strength, resilience and justice.