“Bad Neighbor”
Ukrainian veterans, Mykola Melnyk and Oleh Bonchynskyi visit with guests after ASU panel hosted by the Future Securities Initiative and Center for American Institutions. Photos by Brian Wilke
Contributed by Arthur Nemirovskiy, NAFO volunteer convoy driver and Project Manager with C&T
Four years into Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, three Ukrainian veterans traveled over 6,000 miles to Arizona. They were welcomed with a rare cloud cover. In a small Arizona State University classroom, maybe thirty full seats, the air was thick with quiet: no shuffling, no phones, attention focused. It was a room I had been in before, reading books about war over a decade ago. Half the audience looked like students, the other half was older, the kind of people who might remember a more dangerous world.
Irene Amrine, founder of Cactus and Tryzub, introduced the men. First was Oleh Bonchynskyi, who sat in the middle of the three with a warm smile, his optimism seemingly intact. He worked in road construction before the war, even in Russia, but when he says before the war, he means more than a decade ago, before 2014. Next was Denys Haida, the former bartender, whose welcoming demeanor prompted a casual "everyone loves bartenders." Oleh looked over, and someone in the audience called back, "we like roads too." Last was Mykola Melnyk, retired Sr. Lieutenant in the Armed Forces of Ukraine who previously served as a staffer in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's version of Congress. His prosthetic leg demanded a few extra seconds on every sit, stand, and step.
The older half of the room asked more questions. What is happening right now and what should we do? The younger half was more interested in the future. What does this mean for us? Mykola described their primary goal in coming to America: "We pay for our mistakes with our own blood. It is very important for you to take our on-the-ground experiences." They were here to warn us.
During the Q&A one question stood out when a man asked what to do with family and friends who are against Ukraine. Denys turned the question around: “What would you do if they supported the killing of your family and friends?” The audience nervously laughed.
The classroom was only one stop on their tour through Arizona, a relatively light one. It didn’t show what their uniforms concealed.
Mykola Melnyk went to law school, became a legal expert, an author. Yet here he was, prosthetic leg beneath his military fatigues. His English was practiced, having toured other American cities; he delivered the most memorable line: "We are like old, ugly dogs. Maybe we don't have legs, maybe we don't have eyes, but we will never surrender. Russia can kill us, but never win."
Perhaps he was referring to Oleh Bonchynskyi, whose glass eye was only noticeable at certain angles. He continued to fight for another decade after losing his eye in a Donbas military operation in 2014. "When I am on the battlefield, I am surrounded with the heroes, with the strong guys, and I cannot fail them," recalled Oleh.
The last of these heroes is Denys Haida, seemingly fine on the surface; he routinely sets off airport security with the metal in his body. What he rarely mentions is surviving a gunshot wound to the head and, Bucha. When asked what brought Ukraine here to America, he had two words, “bad neighbor.”
“We are like old, ugly dogs. Maybe we don’t have legs, maybe we don’t have eyes, but we will never surrender. Russia can kill us, but never win”
I had read about war in that room. None of those books asked me for anything. Then I met the men and Irene, and I started volunteering with Cactus and Tryzub.
After completing his military service, Mykola founded the “Brave Children of Ukraine” charity; now all three serve on its board. The foundation helps children of Ukrainian defenders and orphans whose parents died defending Ukraine. They had already given a leg and an eye, taken a bullet to the head, and yet they still had more to give.
Brave Children of Ukraine takes donations at bravechildren.org. Cactus and Tryzub is based in Phoenix, and there is more to do than three men can carry.
