SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — The first time Denys’s children heard fireworks go off in Spokane, Washington, they were terrified. His kids had grown up about 20 miles from the Russian border, in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, and they knew too well the booms of Russian missile attacks and screeching sounds of Ukrainian air defenses. In 2023, after Russians attacked the hospital where his youngest daughter, Olivia, had recently been born, Denys knew he needed a way out, and fast. That’s when a former neighbor, living in an American city on the other side of the world, offered him an escape: “He called me and said, ‘We have a nice program — Uniting for Ukraine,’” Denys recalled. “If you want to come, grab your family and move.”Denys, who asked his last name not be used, leapt at the opportunity. He’s stayed in Spokane for the past three years, getting used to a place where explosions are simply celebrations of freedom. He’d spent a half year learning English, and then drawing on his Ukrainian experience making boilers, he swiftly got a job welding construction beams at Metals Fabrication Co.
Like so many of the 240,000 Ukrainians who have immigrated to this country through the Uniting for Ukraine program, his future here is precarious.
