Determined to help his family, music director at Minneapolis parish crosses into Ukraine

Learning that his mother’s health had deteriorated in his native Ukraine, Yuri Ivan, music director at St. Constantine Ukrainian Catholic Church in Minneapolis, caught “the first plane” he could March 18 as he sought to cross the border into the country Russia had invaded only weeks before.

Landing in Budapest, Hungary, he traveled by car to the Ukraine border and walked across.

“I recall walking in the dark road with a suitcase and backpack to get to the border crossing,” he said in an emailed response to questions sent to him by The Catholic Spirit. “There were many tents with volunteers offering warm food, blankets along the road.”

Ivan said he was the only person moving toward the border while “swarms of refugees” were leaving. “I teared up at this sight,” he said.

Ivan began posting a travelogue on Facebook March 19 with his own words, photos and news articles to document some of what he is experiencing. His hometown in Ukraine, which he did not name, is “far from the fighting on the ground,” but Air Defense sirens and messages to seek shelter show up on his and other cellphones a handful of times a day.

A resident conductor for the State Theatre of Opera and Ballet in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, from 1996-2000, Ivan emigrated to the U.S. in 2001 for his position at St. Constantine and is a permanent U.S. resident. Fluent in five languages, he also serves as music director of the Linden Hills Chamber Orchestra in the Twin Cities. Since 2007, Ivan also has been the artistic director of the Kenwood Symphony Orchestra in Minneapolis and served as a conductor for the Metropolitan Ballet. He founded the Byzantine Choral Music Festival Minnesota in 2010 and serves as its music director. Ivan completed his doctoral studies in conducting at the University of Minnesota.

In a March 28 Facebook post on his travels into Ukraine, Ivan wrote “Ukraine Travelogue: hearing the air attack sirens several times a day makes them a nuisance. We just brush these off, partly because it would take forever to take my mom down from the 3d (sic) floor, but people running for shelter is quite a common sight.”

Of the day he walked across the border into Ukraine, apparently from Slovakia, he posted March 20, with photos: “Refugee Camps, first aid stations, and swarms of refugees all over the little border towns of Slovakia are a pretty disturbing sight. Trying to make discreet photos so that I’m not coming off as a happy camper in the middle of this human tragedy. EU military and volunteers offering help carrying my luggage, all in disbelief that I’m crossing into Ukraine. They say if Ukraine gives in, they are the next target on the line. I spent hours outside in the wind and was fed warm soup in one of these tents full of water and blankets.”

Ivan said his mother lost her vision and is “weak in general.” His sister lives with his mother and helps care for her, but she has Down syndrome and “we can’t rely on her judgment.”

“I’m trying to care of the situation,” he said, “hire a caretaker, which is not easy in the current situation.”

The population of his hometown has increased threefold because of refugees, Ivan said.

“Every day, evacuation trains are coming in,” he said, with some passengers wounded. Refugees are sheltered at “pretty much every school, sport facility, conference hall in the city,” he said. Long lines form at stores. “No basic food shortages now although my friends telling me during the first week of war, shelves were empty,” he said.

Churches function normally, he said, and the city feels safe during daylight. A “(make)shift bomb shelter” is used in the basement of his mother’s apartment building. With no elevator in the building, he said he is not able to take his mother and sister to the basement in a reasonable time “so we just brush off the warning sirens.”

People are worried and uncertain about the future, Ivan said. “With that said, they (are) determined to hold their ground and fight.”

Asked how he thinks Russia’s invasion will end, Ivan said, “With God’s help, Ukraine will prevail.”