A quarter-million-dollar shipment of medical supplies will be heading to war-torn Ukraine thanks to the generosity of donors in Northeast Pennsylvania.
For Rev. Myron Myronyuk, the mission of mercy to his homeland reinforces his belief in the goodness of the Americans he has known during 17 years in this country.
"The people of the United States love and support and pray for Ukraine," said Myronyuk, who serves as pastor of St. Vladimir Ukrainian Catholic Church in Scranton.
"They are still with Ukraine, no matter what," Myronyuk said.
He passionately believes that remains true, despite Friday's tense White House meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
"America (has) never been like that," Myronyuk said Monday. "That's not the way of American people who respect, who help and pray for Ukrainian people."
Among those American people are members of The Rotary Club of Scranton, who teamed up with St. Vladimir's to raise money to buy the items from SOS International, a Louisville, Kentucky-based nonprofit.
The group obtains discounted surplus medical equipment and supplies from U.S. hospitals for shipment to underserved and war-torn countries worldwide.
Myronyuk joined members of the Rotary Club of Scranton on Monday for a Zoom meeting with SOS officials and others to express their thanks, and to bless the shipment before it departs Louisville bound for Dnipro, in central Ukraine.
The city and its surrounding region have been frequent targets of Russian aggression since Moscow invaded the country three years ago — most recently on Saturday, when a Russian missile attack struck a training base in the Dnipropetrovsk region, killing up to Ukrainian 150 troops and up to 30 foreign instructors.
Scranton Rotary member Joe Riccardo said the supplies are destined for hospitals in Dnipro.
"They'll be for children and families that are affected by the war, that have chronic conditions," Riccardo said. "They're having a hard time getting medicines and the supplies they need because of the war."
The fundraising efforts brought in about $20,000, Riccardo said, which were leveraged to purchase supplies worth more than 10 times that amount through SOS, he explained.
"When the invasion first occurred ... we reached out to Father (Myronyuk) and said, 'we want to help.' So over the course of the last two years, we decided we're going to stand with Ukraine," Riccardo said.
Fundraising efforts included sailboat races at Lake Wallenpaupack and a dinner at St. Vladimir's featuring wounded Ukrainian soldiers undergoing rehab at the University of Pennsylvania.
"This is the little church that could," Riccardo said of St. Vladimir's, praising Myronyuk "for rolling his sleeves to make the pierogies and the borscht — whatever they had to do to raise the money."
But the project also was international, and interstate, in scope.
A Rotary chapter in Heerlen, Netherlands — like Scranton a community with a coal mining history — donated $5,400, Riccardo said. And groups in Louisville, which has a large Ukrainian-American community, contributed thousands more, he added.
Among those coordinating the efforts in Kentucky was Dr. Bernard Strenecky, a Scranton native of Ukrainian descent now living in Louisville.
"He's had Ukrainians living in Kentucky ... that have handed him checks and cash and said, 'anything we could do,'" Riccardo added.
During Monday's gathering at Urban Co-Works Scranton, donors from Northeast Pennsylvania and Kentucky talked about the project before Myronyuk and the Rev. Benjamin Hart from Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church in Louisville blessed the donations.
As a gesture of thanks, Myronyuk held up a banner signed by Ukrainian soldiers that will be sent to Louisville.
On his mind Monday was another Ukrainian soldier — a friend in the special forces who died in January.
"I miss my my friend," he said. "And for me, I just can't believe that it happens every day."
Myronyuk, originally from western Ukraine, has a twin brother who has relocated to the U.S. with his family, but the plight of their homeland is always on his mind. He last visited about two years ago, after the war was underway.
"I saw so many cemeteries full of Ukrainian military flags, and that was so difficult to see because war is taking the best of the nation, the strongest guys," he said.
"These children, will never see their daddy, who was a hero," Myronyuk said.
Along with the medical donations, will be a special gift for some of those children: teddy bears with get well cards written in Ukrainian by students at Howard Gardner Multiple Intelligence Charter School in Scranton.
“These are kids that have seen unbelievable evil and darkness, destruction and war. No child should have to go through that,” Riccardo said in December when the cards were being crafted under the guidance of world languages instructor Zlata Korniichuk, who fled Ukraine early on in the war and joined her boyfriend in Pennsylvania.
The children, he said Monday, "need their spirits lifted."
But so does anyone who cares about Ukraine.
As this article was being written Monday evening, the New York Times reported that a Trump administration official said the U.S. was suspending all aid to Ukraine.
Hours earlier, Riccardo reflected on mounting tensions between the two countries.
"I'm speechless. I mean, whoever thought the United States would not support a country fighting for its very freedom and survival," Riccardo said.
"I'm just hoping that people are more motivated now to support Ukraine," he added. "I think we're ordinary people that cared. And hopefully this is occurring all throughout the world."
