“Ukrainian people are protecting the world with our blood”

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Photo: Diana, Ellis, Viktor, and Tim (l-to-r) on a family trip to the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in March 2021.

By Jacob Wheeler

Sun editor

Lake Leelanau Rowing Club coach Viktor Grebennykov and his wife Diana—both natives of Ukraine who currently live in Traverse City— aren’t hiding news of the war in their homeland from their young children. But they moderate which videos and photos Ellis, 4, and Tim, 2, see on the television and computer screens, even as the Russian military continues its daily shelling of Ukrainian cities.

Viktor and Diana shield those young eyes from the most gruesome footage, such as images of bloodied women escaping from a maternity hospital in the Black Sea port city of Mariupol after a Russian airstrike on March 9, or trenches dug for mass graves in the besieged city of half a million, or charred bodies of a family who walked near a television tower in Kyiv which was targeted by a missile on March 1.

Nevertheless, the children comprehend the human costs of this hellish war, and how it endangers family members whom they have never met but know from frequent video chats.

“My daughter asks my mom, ‘do you have enough food? Because if you don’t have enough food, you will die,’” said Diana. “The kids see us watching the news and communicating on Telegram. They come and ask us, ‘What is this? Why is this happening?’ They’re curious. It’s important for us to talk with the kids and not hide the war. Kids feel everything, they understand.”

Viktor, an Olympian and three-time world champion who competed for the Ukrainian rowing team in the 2012 London games, came to the United States in 2015 on an asylum visa. He has coached the Lake Leelanau Rowing Club since 2019 and concedes that he and Diana are “mentally not here” since the invasion began on Feb. 24.

“We still have our jobs. We have to live our lives and stay positive with the kids,” he said. “But I think they feel that we’re not always with them. We worry about family and what’s going in our country. It’s difficult for everyone.”

Ellis and Tim frequently video chat with their grandmothers and aunts. Viktor’s mother Olga and brother Konstantin live in Mykolaiv, which the Russians are trying to subdue in order to reach Odessa and sever Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea. The resistance in Mykolaiv has boobytrapped bridges into the city in order to keep out the attackers. His brother is recovering after being shot in the leg by Russian soldiers while returning to Ukraine from his job in Poland.

Diana’s mother, Luibov, and brother Konstantin fled Kyiv at 6 a.m. on the day of the invasion to shelter in Kamianets-Podilskyi in western Ukraine. They leave their apartment 5-10 times a day to shelter in a bunker when they hear air raid sirens. Despite Diana’s urgings, Luibov wants to remain in the country. Konstantin is helping refugees coming from the capital and also working with the Ukrainian army to identify saboteurs and establish basement and bomb shelters. During one video call, Luibov suddenly told Ellis and Tim, “We have to go to the bunker now.”

One day Ellis grew upset because a girl she follows on YouTube who lives in the besieged city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine stopped posting videos.

“It’s hard to explain that,” said Viktor, who struggles to see an end in sight. “Being optimistic is not realistic. I understand the war is not going to end soon.”


Support from rowing community

Standing 6 feet 7 inches tall, his body as tight as a whip, Viktor’s presence in the County is the culmination of more than 10 years of growth at the Lake Leelanau Rowing Club, said Erik Zehender, who founded the club in 2010 at Fountain Point Resort, which he co-manages. “He’s as good a coach as anyone in the country. There are very few rowing coaches who ‘walk the walk’ and continue competing, themselves. It’s amazing to have that level of coaching here in Leelanau.”

The club launched in 2010 and quickly became a training ground for local high school athletes who would go on to row for elite colleges, including Cornell, Georgetown, Harvard, Louisville, Michigan, Michigan State, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Standout names at the club include Glen Lake sophomore Leo Lombardi, a top U17 athlete who rowed together with Viktor last July from Glen Arbor to Empire in 1 hour and 40 minutes. Another is Traverse City Central student Lila Miller, blind since birth, a three-time national champion in inclusive rowing. But before Viktor took the helm in 2019, the Lake Leelanau Rowing Club cycled through many coaches and lacked stability from one year to the next.

War in his country spurred the move to the United States. Viktor was training with the Ukrainian national team in 2014 in Crimea when the Russians launched a covert effort to seize and occupy the peninsula. Then age 28, he described it as the moment he reconsidered his future plans.

He and Diana moved to Florida the following year. There, a former teammate helped him land a job coaching and competing for the Miami Rowing Club. He met Zehender in 2018 at a regatta in Chattanooga, Tenn. and interviewed for the part-time coaching job in Lake Leelanau.

To make ends meet, Viktor has worked the reception desk and done whatever odd jobs are needed at Fountain Point. He has also worked construction, been an Uber driver, and is currently a personal trainer at the Traverse City Country Club.

“I need to survive, make a living, and support my family,” he said. Diana, a professional gymnast in Ukraine, coaches gymnastics and also works as a personal trainer when she’s not home with the children.

Zehender considers the Grebennykovas part of the Fountain Point family. The resort co-owner fondly remembers when their son, Tim, crawled across the resort’s lawn and used the support of his leg to stand up.

“What’s happening in Ukraine is so overwhelming and heartbreaking,” said Zehender. “The best way we can help is by making sure Viktor’s family is supported, so they can send support to people back home. The more rowers who join the club, the more we can support him.”

 

“Our life is a movie”

Within their own family, Viktor and Diana Grebennykov represent Ukraine’s linguistic and cultural diversity. Viktor’s mother is an ethnic Russian who grew up in Kamchatka in the country’s far east. His father, Alexandr, a Ukrainian who was also a rower, died of cancer last year. Viktor said that, if he were there today, he would join the citizen resistance andfight. Athletes on Ukraine’s national sports teams are often affiliated with the military: Viktor, himself, served in the military police. Some of his rowing brethren in Ukraine have enlisted to fight the Russians.

Meanwhile, Diana’s mother is half Polish and feels an orientation toward the west. She is outspoken in her criticism of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and the danger he poses to the western world.

“The Ukrainian people are protecting the world with our blood,” said Diana, whose family wasn’t surprised by the Russian invasion. They were ready for it and left Kyiv on Feb. 24.

On social media, Diana has called on the United States and NATO to escalate their role in defending Ukraine by establishing a no-fly zone over cities. “Close the sky!” is their mantra.

President Biden and western leaders have stated that they will defend every inch of NATO territory from Russian aggression but won’t send ground troops or airmen into Ukrainian territory. Doing so could lead to a direct standoff between the U.S. and Russia, two nations with nuclear weapons.

Diana laments that many Americans don’t recognize the calamity happening in Europe in real time, which is causing the fastest refugee crisis since World War II.

“Mentally I’m not here. I go to the store and I see people smiling at each other. I hear nice music from the speakers and people enjoying their lives. To them, the lives of Ukrainian people right now is a movie. People in the U.S. are just watching while my people are dying.”

Though the situation grows bleaker by the day, Diana’s face lights up at the mention of Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s embattled president who has stayed behind with his troops in Kyiv to rally his countrymen and women with nightly Facebook Live addresses to the beleaguered nation. Unshaven and haggard, and sporting the same olive-green military t-shirt night after night, western leaders and western media have dubbed Zelensky a modern-day Winston Churchill.

“He’s my hero right now,” said Diana. “In the movies, we saw a superhero or a batman. No, Zelensky is the real hero. He’s very tired, but a truthful hero.”

 

Several Leelanau County initiatives have launched to support Ukraine. The Old Art Building in Leland will host a “commUNITY for Ukraine fundraiser” on Sunday, March 20, from 2-5 pm. Join for local food, live music & an art auction at the Old Art Building. 100% of funds raised will be donated to World Central Kitchen. Suggested donation is $25 with a cash bar. In addition, Bay Books and Martha’s Leelanau Table in Suttons Bay are accepting donations that will be delivered to the Ukrainian Slavic Evangelical Church near Traverse City.