Hundreds of Long Islanders packed the Polish National Home in Glen Cove Sunday to demand an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine ahead of the conflict’s third anniversary on Feb. 24.
The event, sponsored by the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center, featured elected officials, Ukrainian citizens and their supporters who spoke throughout the day about the conflict’s human toll.
HMTC Vice Chair Jolanta Zamecka highlighted the war’s toll on Ukrainian children, some of whom she said are starting to grow gray hairs due to stress. According to UNICEF, at least 659 children had been killed, and 1,747 more had been wounded as of November 2024.
“The world needs to remember, ‘Who is Putin?’ A war criminal and a man who is committing genocide,” Zamecka said.
Since the war started three years ago, over 40,000 civilians have been killed or injured, while around 20,000 Ukrainian children have been forcibly taken to Russia or Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine. The war has also displaced more than 4 million people inside Ukraine, while more than 6.8 million more have fled the country.
One of those 6.8 million people is 17-year-old Viktoriia Polusytok, a Ukrainian citizen who came to the United States two years ago after initially fleeing her home in Lviv to nearby Poland. Polusytok, who now attends Great Neck South High School, was the event’s keynote speaker.
“I remember the first night when I heard explosions. It was unforgettable,” Polusytok said. “It was 3 in the morning. Everybody was asleep. We were alarmed by air danger, and 10 minutes later, my house started shaking and then explosions, one after another. Unfortunately, we went through several weeks like this before we decided to move to Poland.”
For over two hours, speaker after speaker talked about keeping the war’s ongoing memory alive and urged Americans not to fall for Russian misinformation.
“We know what it’s like when devils rewrite facts. We know what a war crime is, whether it happens in Bucha or Mariupol,” Alan Mindel, HTMC chair, said. “We know where the devil resides, whether it’s in Beirut, whether it’s in Berlin, Moscow, Tehran.”
“Or Washington!” someone in the crowd shouted to applause.
The service took place days after President Donald Trump said Ukraine “should have never started the war,” and called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelendskyy a dictator. In both direct and indirect references to Trump, speakers criticized the federal government’s changing approach to the war in Ukraine.
“Putin is the dictator, not Zelensky,” U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Nassau Democrat, said. “They are truly living as a democratic country in the midst of a time when they are being attacked.”
As co-chair of the bipartisan “problem solvers caucus” in Congress, Suozzi said bipartisan decision-making in Congress is needed to bring a peace deal that holds Russia accountable.
Other speakers made comparisons between the current war and atrocities in Ukraine’s past like the Holodomor, a famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in the early 1930s.
“Never forget, never again,” Mindel said.
