As a warning in advance, this is going to sound harsh.
Here's a photo that I'm linking in from Twitter:
This is a scene that's repeated daily all over Ukraine. A sad, and timeless one. A father is leaving his wife and child to fight for his country.
Early in the war this repeated constantly at the Polish border. Men took their families to Poland, and then they turned back to fight for Ukraine.
This last weekend, the Trib had an article about two Polish women and a child who were refugees in Wyoming. I read it, because I read the Trib, but also as I wondered if it referenced an earlier story. It didn't.
I don't blame the women for taking refuge here during the war.
This is a snippet from the earlier article:
In Douglas, there’s a similarly normal picture: Floorhands and pithands working on an oil rig. One of the workers on this rig – his name is Andrii – has just started.
After a perilous first night getting stuck in a snowstorm 9 miles away from the rig, and then having to be rescued by the rig manager in the morning, Andrii is just grateful to have a job.
Five countries, six months of waiting for a work visa and over 500 job applications later, he is here, working 12-hour shifts.
Iryna and Andrii came over to America with Uniting for Ukraine, a government program started by President Joe Biden in an effort to help Ukrainians displaced by Russia’s invasion. They are not refugees; instead, their status under the program is considered “humanitarian parole.”
First of all, Iryna and Andrii are refugees, no matter what they are called. But here's the bigger question.
Why is Andrii working on an American oil rig rather than defending his country? Photos show him as a young healthy man, and he's clearly healthy enough to work on oil rigs.
It's a legitimate question for which no answer is provided, and the question does not appear to have been posed. It should have been. Absent a really good answer, Andrii shouldn't be in the US working, he should be in his home country defending it.
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