BLITZ INTERVIEW: Gregory Aimaro-Parmut is a US historian with strong Ukrainian roots and a few home truths to tell

Aimaro-Parmut is in love with Chernihiv and unimpressed by the West's slow response, the unrealistic war statistics, and Ukraine's slow mobilization.

Where are you from? And where are you now? Doing what?

I was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs and am now back here. I am currently working in a field unrelated to my education or training. This is not by choice but due to my current circumstances. My background is in history and international relations. I hold a master’s degree from Indiana University. The focus of my research was the Nazi occupation of Ukraine and the Holocaust. I am also a specialist in the Soviet period of Ukrainian history in general. After defending my master’s thesis in the summer of 2021, I moved to Ukraine to stay there for four years. I chose to live in the city of Chernihiv because it has/had archives that are central to my research. There were also sentimental motivations as well. On my maternal line, I have roots in Chernihiv, Poltava, and Vinnytsia oblasts. My great-grandfather is from the town of Pryluky in the southern Chernihiv Oblast. I have visited, lived, and worked in Pryluky on and off since 2015. I have a large social circle there and am a bit of a celebrity. Not to get too metaphysical, but Pryluky is one of the only places on Earth where I feel at home, and I have felt that ever since my first visit. It is in my blood.

(Gregory Aimaro-Parmut in the local paper with one of the last surviving Soviet partisans of the region, Petro Kropivyanskyi, 97, in September 2021. Kropivyanskyi died shortly after.)

As a foreigner who has worked and lived in Ukraine for a long time, what is the best and worst thing about working and living here?

Although major cities like Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Lviv attract many expats, I would say that living in Ukraine is not for everyone. It is a very poor country which is unfortunately beset by many problems. And I am not even getting into the current issue of war. Having a competent command of Ukrainian and Russian has helped me in my time living there, having roots and family too. But I would not advise visiting Ukraine as a country for your first-time traveler. It can be a challenging country to navigate, even with help from local friends. Personally, in my own experience I have enjoyed living in villages, rayon centers (small towns/cities), and in mid-sized cities like Chernihiv.

(The view from Gregory Aimaro-Parmut’s window in Chernihiv: “Not so great looking maybe, but I miss it every day.”)

Kyiv, although beautiful, is not my cup of tea. It is crowded and chaotic, and I find the people there to be rather rude (my apologies to my friends from Kyiv). I feel it is not a good representation of the country as a whole: what I mean is that the standard of living there is a lot higher. Even experts in Ukrainian studies, some of my more esteemed colleagues, make the mistake of seeing the country through the lens of its richest cities. Equally problematic is that they limit their social contacts to people like themselves - primarily fellow academics and intellectuals. In my opinion, this gives them a skewed view of life in Ukraine for an average person. They do not see the local corruption and its effects on the general populace. Chernihiv Oblast, the region I lived in, excluding the capital Chernihiv, is one of Ukraine’s poorest. Seeing what people go through to survive is heartbreaking at times. In places like Pryluky, there is a huge brain drain. Many people with the opportunity are leaving for better jobs in the European Union, particularly in Poland. This was happening before 2014, but it has only been exacerbated since then.

If you have money, Ukraine is a wonderful place to live and visit. I particularly miss how cheap everything was for an expat. Particularly the food. I miss the produce there the most, particularly fruit. No one has lived until they have had strawberries or sour cherries from Ukraine. They are simply the best. I cry when I eat the strawberries here in the USA, they taste like grass. I also noticed that I felt the healthiest I have ever had while living in Ukraine. I believe a lot of it concerned the food I was eating. For example, I ate salo (cured pork fatback) every day yet lost weight. The dairy products there are also immeasurably better than in the States. No comparison. I also miss my friends and friendships in Ukraine. Ukrainian hospitality is not well known in the West. Still, I would say Ukrainians and largely most Slavic peoples (especially south and east Slavs) are among the most hospitable and warm people in the world. Their mentality, too, I would say, is closer to my own than most of the Western EU countries. Ukrainians are very direct with their feelings. If they have a problem with you, they will tell you. For some, such as myself, this quality is a virtue.

(Gregory Aimaro-Parmut is in the center of Chernihiv in better times.)

How has the war changed your life? Has the war changed you personally?

I have a hard time saying that the war uprooted me because I had a home and family to go back to. So many others lost everything, so I hate to play the victim. Had it not been for my elderly parents and me being their only child, I probably would have stayed in Ukraine. It was hard for everyone to convince me in the days leading up to the full-scale invasion that I should leave. Had I not had such guilt over my parents being worried sick, I probably would have ended up in the siege of Chernihiv. I could very well have died. An American expat came to Chernihiv a week after I left because his wife needed treatment in one of the local hospitals. This poor man ended up dying during the siege when a shell hit the bread line he was standing in. About 10 or more people died in this incident. This easily could have been me had I stayed in Chernihiv. Getting out during those first days was very difficult.

Despite being lucky not to have experienced the war firsthand, it has profoundly affected my life. My future plans were completely disrupted, if not dashed entirely. I have been dealing with depression on and off since the start of this. 2022 was the worst year for me. In 2023 I found a job as a refugee case manager for U4U parolees. I worked this job for 9 months. It was very stressful and not as fulfilling as I hoped. But that is a story for a different day.  The war is on my mind every day, perhaps every hour. There is no escaping it. Largely my life is trying to pick up the pieces and develop a new long-term plan. It has been hard, but luckily, I have special people in my life who have helped me and continue to help me through it. My partner, for example, is an Armenian woman, but she was born in Azerbaijan during the 1980s, so war has truly disrupted her life and displaced her. She has been an immense help to me in dealing with this trauma.

(Gregory Aimaro-Parmut working in a humanitarian nongovernmental organization in Chicago immediately after the full-scale war started, making specialized sleeping bags for refugees.)

I want to stress that I have also been lucky to have not yet lost anyone dear to me in this conflict. This is even though I have quite a few close friends serving in the Ukrainian military. I also did not lose anyone when the Russians were outside Chernihiv, Nizhyn, and Pryluky. By some miracle, Pryluky has been largely untouched by this war. I pray to God every day that he continues to protect Pryluky. It is like Jerusalem to me. It is that holy and close to my heart.

(Gregory Aimaro-Parmut laying flowers at the memorial at Pliskunivska Yar, in Pryluky (a mass killing site by the nazis), several members of his family lie here.)

One thing I will say is that this war has turned me into a more cynical person. I was honestly very angry in the days leading up to the war that the Biden administration was twiddling their feet. In my opinion, they were warning Ukraine and releasing intelligence, but on the diplomatic front with Russia, they were not doing enough. If I were president of the U.S. leading up to the war, Vladimir Putin would have died of an aneurysm just from the number of times he would have had to pick up the red phone. I would not have let that bastard alone until a solution was reached. But a lot of people here in the U.S. benefit from the war. I am not trying in any way to deflect blame from the real perpetrators here. We all know that it is Russia) But I still believe there was a period in which this could have been prevented, perhaps with some measures that would not have been favorable to Ukraine, but a bad peace is always better than war. Unfortunately, we are long past that point. Western military aid is keeping Ukraine afloat at best right now. More must be done in terms of military aid and the speed at which it is delivered. If we cannot do that, something has to be done drastically on the diplomatic front. I believe this war will end in that way and that it will likely not be fully in Ukraine’s favor.

What has surprised you most about Ukrainians these past couple of years? Good or bad?

A lot of things have surprised me. I think, generally, one of the more positive surprises has been the way in which a large segment of Ukrainian society has mobilized and rallied around its soldiers. This happened before in 2014, but not nearly to the extent we are seeing now. I see all the time how my civilian friends are donating large portions of their salary to the army - particularly the crowdfunding aspect of this war has been a very positive development. I like getting supplies and funds to my friends and their units directly. I generally avoid very large charities and try to aid those I care about most directly so I know where my money is going.

Equally though I have noticed how this conflict has had disastrous demographic consequences for Ukraine. So many people, including military-aged men, have left the country, and although undoubtedly some of them will return, I know for a fact, as a former U4U case manager, that very few of them have the intention of returning home. This and the hesitance of Volodymyr Zelensky’s government to go through with a general mobilization is the root of Ukraine’s manpower problem. I fear too that this cannot be fully fixed. Regarding the refugee crisis, I was really shocked at how many of my clients were from the western oblasts. These are the traditionally more “patriotic” and prosperous regions. Many people have used this war as an excuse to leave the country.

I have many gut-wrenching stories about some of these people from my time as a case manager. Not so much their experiences as victims of war but of their experiences here. For example, my colleague had a family in her caseload, which was sponsored by relatives. This family was basically being used by their sponsors as indentured servants. Their own relatives took control of their passports and vital documents and held them hostage. This is just one of many sad examples. 

What are your future plans? 

At this point I want to have the opportunity again to come back to Ukraine. I want Ukraine to survive this with its sovereignty intact. Particularly, I want the regions most dear to me to remain part of sovereign Ukraine. My biggest fear is Russia returning to Chernihiv Oblast again. If this war ends or even freezes in the next few years, I hope I will have the opportunity to return. I would love to take part in rebuilding and reconstruction. There is also additional research and projects I wish to do. For example, I want to write a monograph on the Nazi occupation of Chernihiv Oblast and the partisan groups operating in the southern rayons of this region. Although the most important archive for this, the Chernihiv SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) archive, was destroyed in the siege, many other resources remain intact. I would love, for example, to go to Poltava’s SBU archive or their state archive (DAPO).

(Gregory Aimaro-Parmut and his friend and his fellow historian Kostya, who is now serving in the Ukrainian army.)

How do you see the war ending and Ukraine returning to normal life?

I am not optimistic that Ukraine can achieve its own maximalist war aims - the liberation of areas that have been seized and occupied by Russia since 2014. There was a lot of euphoria in 2022 following Russia’s massive military blunders. But the Russians have learned from the experiences and the defensive lines they have set up are virtually impenetrable. One thing that has bothered me a lot about this war is that one can see the Soviet legacy rearing its ugly head, even on the Ukrainian side. We know that the casualty figures published by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense are absolute propaganda and, on many levels, not much better than how Russia reports its own causalities as well as the causalities suffered by the Ukrainian side. While it is true that the Russian military leadership does not value the lives of its soldiers, if they really had suffered 500,000 killed in action by this point, this war would be long over. I absolutely cringe when I see people reposting these reports as if it is fact. Both sides lie so often that it is hard to tell the truth from fiction in this conflict. Equally, I have heard from friends in the Ukrainian military of horrible issues of corruption within the military and political leadership. This type of thing cannot be ignored for Ukraine to be a successful country.  On a positive note, I believe that Ukraine - with proper Western support - can endure long enough for an armistice like the Korean War. This would potentially give Ukraine time to rebuild its economy. I am not sure what Ukraine will look like at the end of this, but I am hoping for the best. Ukraine needs to focus on fighting its internal enemies (corrupt politicians) as much as Russian aggression.

(Gregory Aimaro-Parmut, teaching English in Nizhyn at School Number III, before the war.)

Tell us one thing you think people abroad do not know about Ukraine, but they really should.

For starters, they should know that the origins of this conflict have more to do with competing historical narratives than anything else. Particularly the Russian nationalist view of history, which views the three East Slavic ethnic groups to be one and the same. There is also a Jerusalem-like significance that this Russian nationalist narrative places on Kyiv. It is central to the foundation myths of both Russia and Ukraine. This is why I get very frustrated when people make statements like “Putin won’t stop at Ukraine” or “We are helping Ukraine fight Putin, so we do not have to.” This was always about Ukraine. And it is OK to support Ukraine alone. Not because of Western interests. Ukraine deserves to survive. Ukraine deserves to be loved, and that love is not contingent on EU or NATO membership. In an ideal world, Ukraine would be like Israel to me. That is a largely self-sufficient “samostyna” (in Ukrainian) and able to handle any external (and internal) threat. A Ukraine that doesn’t have to answer to anyone. That is what it would be in a perfect world.