News
Renewed worries for Ohioans with ties to Ukraine with J.D. Vance selected as Trump’s VP pick
By: Karen Kasler | Statehouse News Bureau
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COLUMBUS, Ohio (Statehouse News Bureau) – Ohio’s junior Senator J.D. Vance has expressed views that have concerned Ohioans with connections to Ukraine; for instance, in February 2022 he said he “doesn’t really care what happens to Ukraine”. Now that Republican former president Donald Trump has picked him as his running mate, those concerns are even more pronounced.
Around 100,000 Ohioans are from Ukraine or have Ukrainian roots. And they’re scared, said Joe Cimperman, the president and CEO of Global Cleveland, which has helped thousands of refugees settle in northeast Ohio.
“If people don’t think that the horrors that we’re seeing right now of bombing children’s hospitals, and of attacking people in the middle of the day, and creating absolute chaos and destruction and laying farmlands to waste when we have food shortages – if people don’t think that’s not a page from the history book of what Stalin was doing, then they’re not reading the same history book that I am,” Cimperman said.
And he said that fear and dread extends to anyone with links to eastern European countries that were behind the Iron Curtain.
“There’s PTSD all over the Slovenian, Croatian, Polish, Czechoslovakian, Hungarian, Lithuanian and Estonian communities right now, because we were all under the ‘evil empire’, as President Reagan said,” Cimperman said. “There is a fear that the great Soviet empire building machine is back.”
And Cimperman said a lot of federal Ukrainian aid money ends up in Ohio to produce Abrams tanks in Lima and other weaponry.
Andy Fedynsky directs the Ukrainian Museum Archives in Cleveland, and said he’s hopeful since Vance changed his opinion of Trump, he could be swayed on Ukraine.
“Our community has reached out to him on more than one occasion, on numerous occasion to meet, to come get to know us, hear our view, either agree or disagree,” Fedynsky said, adding that Vance has not set up a meeting. “We want to make sure that he’s armed with the facts as we see them and see if he’s open to changing his mind.”
Vance’s views are different from those of his predecessor, Republican Rob Portman, who co-chaired the Senate’s Ukraine caucus.
“He’s been to Ukraine at least 10 times, if not more. So he’s well informed, knows the players and knows what’s at stake for the United States and for the Western alliance,” Fedynsky said. “And we’re disappointed that our senator has done a 180 turnabout on that issue.”
Vance’s office had no comment.