How a group of Russian and Ukrainian immigrants bonded around a Minnesota campfire

NEW LONDON, Minn. — Viktoriia Panova knows fellow Ukrainian refugees who refuse to talk to Russians and speak their language since the invasion in February 2022 that destroyed their nation and exiled millions of citizens.

She understands their anger; Panova was a teenager when Russian-backed militants waged a war for control of her hometown of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine in 2014. Panova moved to Kyiv, then left Ukraine two years ago, after Russia illegally annexed Donetsk. Now living in Minneapolis, she has long accepted that she will never get back all that she lost from Russia's aggression. She just wants to connect with anyone from the region – Russian and Ukrainian alike – trying to reconstruct their lives in the United States amid the aftermath.

So Panova, 28, was among a handful of Ukrainians who joined a group of antiwar Russians recently to go camping in Sibley State Park here, grilling marinated chicken and pork, fishing in the lake and sharing stories around the campfire. The party displayed Ukrainian and Russian opposition flags and listened to songs from both nations.

As clashes intensified in Donetsk and Russian President Vladimir Putin made nuclear threats, Panova and others tried to find solace and a community in the woods of western Minnesota. They enjoyed popular Russian dishes — mimosa, a layered salad of fish, eggs and cheese, and olivier, a dish of meat, potatoes and pickles — and Panova confided in a few Russians about how the war had divided her own family.

Her father is Russian but supports Ukraine in the war, while her mother is Ukrainian and supports Russia — a disagreement that prompted them to separate.

"She has propaganda in her head," Panova told the Russian campers. They had all suffered so much from this war, she added. "How can my mother like Putin? … He basically ruined our country."

Though Russian soldiers are paid well, Panova and a Russian immigrant who came here for college agreed that they didn't understand how people could kill each other even for money. Panova said she had talked to both Russian and Ukrainian fighters years ago in Donetsk "who are not there mentally because they experienced so much."

She asked several Russians about being considered a threat in their homeland because of their political views. One Russian newcomer living in St. Paul, Svetlana, said she was. She had worked for the Moscow government and officials threatened to check employees' phones for antiwar materials. Opposed to the invasion, Svetlana and her husband and children left to cross the Mexican border and seek asylum and are among more than 59,000 Russians in the U.S. with pending immigration cases.

Panova, for her part, had stints in Poland, Estonia and Canada before spending time in Los Angeles. She explained to the Russian campers that she was feeling so depressed after the war broke out that she wanted to go back to Ukraine. But she found purpose while in L.A. helping produce a documentary about survivors of Russia's atrocities in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

As she was readying to move to Minnesota eight months ago, she heard about the group that organized the camping trip, Russians Against War-Minnesota, from the social media app Telegram and started attending events. The organization aids Russian asylum-seekers and political prisoners and educates people about the country's human rights abuses; since last summer, Russians Against War-Minnesota has held periodic camping trips and social events that also include Ukrainians. On the most recent excursion, an asylum seeker from Belarus and Indian Russophile joined the fun too.

Among the attendees in Sibley State Park were Evgeniia Kuznetcova, 30, a Russian native who moved here nearly a decade ago to study at University of Minnesota and join her mother and stepfather, and her husband Dmytro Kulchykovskyi, 31, who immigrated from Ukraine around the same time.

The outbreak of the war devastated the couple. One of Kulchykovskyi's Ukrainian friends sent his wife messages accusing her of supporting the war. And Kulchykovskyi was kicked out of a Ukrainian Facebook group after speaking up when people made negative comments about the Russian language, which he speaks with Kuznetcova. After the war started they went to an antiwar protest with many Ukrainians and she was uncomfortable at the hatred for Russia, though she supported the participants.

When Kuznetcova spoke with antiwar group founder and longtime Russian American Elena Mityushina, of Maple Grove, that day in Sibley State Park, it moved her to hear her give voice to the conflicted feelings of being Russian — how Mityushina felt depressed and guilty when the war started though she had been living in the U.S. for a long time, while still loving the country where she was born. Spending time mostly with Ukrainians and people who aren't Russian, Kuznetcova didn't know anyone who ever understood the way she felt amid the war.

"When there's a war people hate each other, but a community like this should have more power," said Kulchykovskyi, whose brother is fighting the war in Ukraine. "Because there are many Russians who don't support this war and there are many Ukrainians who don't hate Russians. … We're here to show that people are united and Ukrainians and Russians can live in peace."

As some relaxed in the late-afternoon sun, they bonded over their observations of the cultural differences in America. In Ukraine and Russia, for instance, people smile less and are more straightforward.

"People here smile so much and it's kind of hard to get used to it," Pamova said.

After Donetsk native Daniel Zohot, 22, lit a Marlboro Light, Russian asylum seeker Pavel (Svetlana's husband) said he's never smoked in his life. Pavel did not want his family's last name published, fearing the safety of relatives in Russia. He noted that in America few people smoke cigarettes compared with Russia and Ukraine, and the two men started debating smoking culture between the countries.

Pavel, 41, used to be a manager of alcohol sales in Moscow and joked that he made a lot of people drunk — something he regrets, but it was a very good income. Now he works in food delivery, a shift he said was hard on him psychologically at first. But then he realized that supporting his family is more important than his job title.

He noted that he had met a few Ukrainians in his English class; some were skeptical of him at first but they became much more open after he said he is against Putin's war.

"I like your flag," Pavel told Zohot.

The young Ukrainian man wore a pin displaying Ukrainian (blue and yellow) and Russian opposition flags (blue and white).

Zohot moved to Moscow for work in 2020, then to Kyiv to be with his brother the following year. He said an officer of the Territorial Defense Forces interrogated him for being a registered resident of Russian-occupied Donetsk and alluded to him being a Russian spy. He had already disputed some of Ukraine soldiers' actions in his hometown and after the 2022 invasion, held antiwar beliefs and didn't want to participate in the conflict for either side. He paid a bribe to leave Ukraine and went to Poland and Belarus before arriving in Minneapolis this year.

He works in a box factory with many Ukrainians and some Russians, but also has to use a translator app with American colleagues as he learns English. He said he feels a closer connection to people from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus because he can communicate with them better and share advice on jobs and other matters.

Zohot, who was invited on the trip by Panova, said he doesn't tie people to their government; he likes Russians and Ukrainians alike and doesn't associate them with the actions of their regimes.

The group drank beer, played volleyball, and grilled burgers. They ate a Ukrainian family's khacapuri, a Georgian cheese bread. As night fell, everyone gathered around a campfire to sing songs. The first was a Russian song about a place racked by a war without cause over many years.

"There's red, red blood," the campers sang in Russian. "After an hour, it was absorbed into the ground. After two there were flowers and grass. After three, the earth lived again, and it was warmed by the rays of a star called the sun..."

Then they sang a song in Ukrainian: "When the day comes, the war will be over. I lost myself there, I saw through the cover. Embrace me, embrace me, embrace me ... Let your spring come."

The group sang a third song, "No Exit," by the Russian rock band Splean, whose lead singer dedicated it to artists who escaped the country after the invasion of Ukraine. Mityushina said the feeling of having no way out, as the lyrics describe, very much resonates with Russians and Ukrainians.

As they ended the song, Panova held up a glass of champagne and cups to lighten the mood.

"Okay guys, there's no way out — we've been saving the champagne for two days and we need to drink it," she joked in Russian. "You guys have no choice!"

Everyone erupted in laughter, and a Russian asylum seeker named Andrei Klenin popped the cork and made a toast as he stood alongside Zohot and Panova. He said he hoped the conflict would end soon, all the guilty would be punished and that all the refugees from the war would settle well here.

Then he cheered to friendship.