Ukrainians in Northern Michigan experience an anniversary of pain and mourning
By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor
Viktor Grebennkyov is an Olympic rower (London 2012 games) who coached the Lake Leelanau Rowing Club.
For Diana Grebennykova, a Ukrainian who lives in Traverse City near the border with Leelanau County, February 24—the one-year anniversary of Russia’s brutal invasion of her home country—is an “anniversary of pain and mourning.”
Diana and her husband Viktor Grebennykov, the former coach of the Lake Leelanau Rowing Club, have lived in Northern Michigan since 2019 after moving to the United States in 2015 (the year after Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and fomented a separatist rebellion in the Donbass region). They are raising two young children here—Ellis, who is 5, and Tim, who is 3. Diana’s mother, Liubov Shchegelska, moved in with them on April 23 after she left Kyiv on the morning of the invasion and eventually traveled through Poland, France and Mexico to reach the United States.
Liubov Shchegelska arrived in Northern Michigan in April.
[We featured the family in our March 2022 edition, and then again in May after Liubov arrived in Traverse City.]
Diana said that she and Viktor choose not to talk with their children about the war, “but they know that it is war there,” she told the Glen Arbor Sun on the war’s one-year anniversary. Liubov plans to stay with them until it is safe to return to Ukraine.
The war has changed their family in many ways, including their cultural identification. Viktor, who competed in the 2012 London Olympics for the Ukrainian rowing team, is a native Russian speaker. His family are ethnic Russians with roots in Kamchatka in the country’s far east.
Now Viktor speaks only the Ukrainian language with Diana and their children.
“He improved it so much. I’m proud of him,” she said. “And feel more Ukrainian than ever.”
“My heart is always with Ukraine,” said Diana. “I’m always dreaming about when I will come back to visit my family when we will win.”
