Ukraine rally in Detroit sparked by Russian attack on hospital

Detroit – The Ukrainian-American Crisis Response Committee of Michigan organized a rally at Hart Plaza in Detroit on Monday to draw attention to Russia’s heaviest bombing of Detroit’s capital in months, which included the destruction of a children’s hospital.

“I don’t know if it’s any more dangerous than a children’s hospital where children are being treated for illnesses and injuries,” said Andrew Powers, the organization’s communications coordinator. “And this at a time when Russia claims it wants to negotiate peace.”

Dozens of people from the region’s Ukrainian community gathered at the Joe Louis memorial in Hart Plaza on Monday evening to raise awareness of the attack and urge people not to forget the war in the country.

The daytime attack on Kyiv damaged the country’s largest children’s hospital and other buildings, killing dozens of people and wounding more than 150, the Associated Press reported on Monday. The attack interrupted heart surgeries and forced young cancer patients to undergo their treatments outdoors. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media that the shelling of more than 40 rockets hit five cities.

Powers estimates that about 50,000 people in southeast Michigan have emigrated from Ukraine or are descendants of immigrants from the country. The Ukrainian-American Crisis Response Committee was established in January 2022, a month before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The organization wanted to use the rally to draw attention to the Kyiv hospital’s need for equipment and emergency medical care. United24, a platform run by the Ukrainian government, launched a fundraiser in cooperation with the Ukrainian bank Monobank to raise money for the hospital. The committee is also raising money for equipment for Ukrainian soldiers, such as uniforms and drones.

“The people who were hospitalized are unfortunately still sick. And it’s dangerous to travel to other areas of Ukraine where these things may be more prevalent,” Powers said.

Oksana Klotchkov, 47, is from Lviv. She has lived in the United States for 23 years and her husband is Russian. She said his family supports Russia and she has cut off contact with them. But that was not difficult for her, she said, because there are no two sides to the debate about who to support.

“I don’t feel like I have to tolerate any support for Russia in the slightest,” she said.

Alla Gushcha lived in Kyiv until about ten years ago and then came to the USA because of her husband, whom she met online.

Frequent power outages have become the norm for those still living in Ukraine, including her aunt and uncle, as ongoing Russian attacks target the country’s energy infrastructure. Monday’s attack on the hospital hit her particularly hard because she remembers her daughter, now 35, being treated there as a young child.

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