Lynners with Ukraine ties on edge

LYNN – “It?s a mess,” said Val Kostenko, seconds after finishing a Skype conversation Monday with a friend living in Crimea: ground zero for international tensions surrounding last weekend?s Russian invasion.Kostenko?s friend and fellow dentist is pro-Russian and said most Crimeans think of themselves as Russians although they live in Ukraine. Kostenko doesn?t share that viewpoint, and he doesn?t like Russian President Vladimir Putin.?I?d love to see the United States, the European Union and the international community smash Putin in the face,” he said.Broadcast images of masked gun-toting men patrolling Ukrainian streets grabbed global attention Saturday and set off alarms with Lynn residents who have loved ones and friends living in Ukraine.High crime and food shortages prompted Kostenko and his wife, Larisa, to leave Ukraine for the United States in 1993, but his mother and sister still live there.?Of course I?m worried – it?s a complete mess,” he said.Irina Yeliseyva keeps close tabs on politics in her native Russia, and she compared Putin?s push into Crimea, a peninsula jutting into the Black Sea, with Adolph Hitler?s lust for conquest.?Ukraine people should be able to restructure their government,” she said.Moscow native Natasha Soolkin is concerned about how the Crimean crisis will affect long-term U.S.-Russia relations. If problems between Russia and Ukraine spread, she sees the superpowers returning to the standoff that marked the last half of the 20th century.The Kostenkos attended dental school in Simferopol, where soldiers have taken up positions. As a child in the former Soviet Union, Larisa Kostenko thought of Russians and Ukrainians as citizens of a single nation. The disagreements dividing Ukraine and the faceoff with Russia have left her baffled.?I can hardly understand what is going on,” she said.Val Kostenko did not identify his Crimean friend Monday, saying the man fears attaching his name to publicity could expose him to harassment from both sides in the Ukraine-Russia conflict.Although some Russians in Ukraine want to preserve their heritage, Kostenko said Ukrainian nationalists want to purge their country of ties to Russia, including the Russian language.?Ukraine is deeply divided,” he said.He said most Ukrainians want a stable government because so many people, including his mother and sister, are tied, in terms of daily survival, to state assistance.Sniazhana Vinnikava works with Yeliseyva at the Foods of Europe grocery on State Street and said older Russians and Ukrainians should try to reduce tensions between their countries by speaking out about the huge cost in human lives tallied up by World War II.?We know about how much pain and suffering it can cause,” she said.