Brandon to twin with Chervonohrad, Ukraine

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/07/2024 (626 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The City of Brandon will soon enter a twinning agreement with Chervonohrad, Ukraine as a show of solidarity as Ukraine continues to fend off a Russian invasion.

Brandon City Council discussed the twinning agreement at a special meeting held Monday evening.

Chervonohrad is a mining city in western Ukraine with a population of around 64,000, located about 30 kilometres from the border with Poland.

Mayor Jeff Fawcett said the twinning made sense as Winnipeg has been twin cities with Chervonohrad’s provincial capital, Lviv, for several decades. Lviv is located about 70 km south of Chervonohrad.

“We were sort of surprised we didn’t have a Ukrainian sister city,” Fawcett said about looking through Brandon’s history of twinning agreements.

He said the first discussions over the twinning agreement started more than a year ago, given Brandon’s strong ties to Ukraine and the city opening its doors to newcomers after the invasion.

A public signing event of the twinning agreement will be held jointly with Chervonohrad representatives via the internet in the future.

Even though the region is on the other side of the country from the heaviest fighting in the ongoing war with Russia, that doesn’t mean it has avoided being affected by it.

Online news outlet Ukrainska Pravda reported multiple Russian missile attacks on power infrastructure in the Chervonohrad distract in April and May.

Julia Krykavska, co-founder of local Ukrainian-Canadian organization Tryzub, said at the meeting that there are several people in Brandon who either originally come from Chervonohrad or the same region, like herself.

She said the agreement would help not just connect the people of Chervonohrad and Brandon but provide a link between those who come to Canada because of the war and people back in their homeland.

“As a community, that’s a great relationship we can provide to our sisters and brothers in Ukraine right now,” Krykavska said.

According to her, there are at least 400 families who have settled in Brandon after fleeing the war in Ukraine.

“Ninety per cent of those families receive item donations from people in Brandon,” Krykavska said.

She said monetary donations have slowed down in recent months after other world events dominated the news, but Tryzub continues to hold monthly fundraisers to fulfil requests made by both people on the war’s frontline and newcomer families in Manitoba.

Items delivered to the frontlines from Brandon fundraising efforts helped save the lives of two of her friends, she said.

More information on Tryzub’s events and fundraising efforts can be found through its Facebook group named Ukrainian-Canadian Association “Tryzub.”

Joining the meeting virtually to support the announcement were Walter Palagniuk, a representative of the Vyshyvanka Association, and Marianna Kulava, first secretary at Ukraine’s embassy in Ottawa.

In March, Palagniuk was included on a list of individuals sanctioned by Russia and forbidden from entering the country for their support for the Ukrainian government. He recently started working as a staffer for Brandon-Souris Conservative MP Larry Maguire.

Palagniuk said Monday marked 867 days of Ukraine being subject to Russian aggression and that the agreement with Brandon will show the people of Chervonohrad they have somewhere to visit once the war is over.

He outlined several other twinning efforts he had helped facilitate between Canadian and Ukrainian cities.

Speaking about Chervonohrad, Palagniuk said it is an industrial city with mining, metalworking, woodworking and other industries.

Kulava thanked the people of Canada for their unwavering support for Ukraine.

Chervonohrad Mayor Andriy Zalivskyi, who presides over a 36-member city council, was a history teacher before entering politics in 2011.

Going forward, both cities will create a working group of municipal staffers, local agencies and other representatives in the community to achieve both short- and long-term partnership objectives.

Potential areas of collaboration include tourism, culture, youth outreach, sports, science, education, environmental protection and various exchanges.

“I don’t think they have a curling team in Chervonohrad, but I’m sure they would be interested in learning about it,” Palagniuk said.

In March, Ukrainska Pravda reported that the Ukrainian parliament is planning a vote to rename Chervonohrad to “Sheptyskyi” as part of ongoing efforts to remove Russian influences in the country.

Andrii Sheptyskyi was a prominent leader in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church as well as a leader in the national movement in the first half of the last century, the site said.

Brandon has signed twinning agreements with at least two cities in the past, but both were in North America.

In 1969, Brandon partnered with Lachine, Que. A 1996 article by the Sun said Brandon had entered a twinning agreement with Huron, S.D.

After its discussion on the twinning agreement, council moved into an in-camera session to deal with a finance matter. Councillors Kris Desjarlais (Ward 2), Glen Parker (Ward 9) and Tyson Tame (Ward 10) were absent from the meeting.

The next regular council meeting is on July 29.

» cslark@brandonsun.com

» X: @ColinSlark