“Living Like War” in New York's Little Odessa

When the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, Bobby Rakhman decided to change the name of his “Taste of Russia” grocery store to “International Foods” in the Little Odessa neighborhood of Brighton Beach in southern Brooklyn, in “solidarity” with Ukrainians.

Unlike other Russian-named restaurants and shops in Manhattan, Rakhman assures AFP that he has not been threatened or seen its clientele diminished.

“We felt that 'Taste of Russia' was inappropriate, so we decided to rename” this trade that her parents opened 40 years ago after arriving as refugees from the Soviet Union in the 1970s.

“We have a mixed clientele but inside the store we haven't had any confrontation. What happens outside, I can't tell you,” stresses the 51-year-old Russian-American, after recalling that Ukrainians work with families in Ukraine in his business.

“People are very angry and very sad” and “everyone is talking about war,” he says.

Many people only speak Russian in Little Odessa, as is this southern Brooklyn neighborhood on the Atlantic shore, where the Jews of Eastern Europe settled, and in particular this Ukrainian city located on the shores of the Black Sea, now surrounded by Russian troops.

Most Holocaust survivors who arrived in the United States settled in Brighton Beach, as did the Russian-speaking population after the collapse of the Soviet Union beginning in 1991. 45% speak a Slavic language at home, according to the US census.

Many of the commercial posters have the name in Cyrillic and there are many Ukrainian flags or yellow and blue colors and anti-war posters.

- Losing friends -

The invasion of Ukraine, the bombings, the destruction of cities and civilians by the troops of Russian President Vladimir Putin have divided this working-class population that has lived together for decades in peace.

“We've lost a lot of Russian friends here. We just cut it off. It's very scary for them,” says Liliya Myronyuk, a 56-year-old Ukrainian who has been living in the neighborhood for 18 years.

“I live as in war, every day is war for me”, he acknowledges, before crying when he talks about his family in Ukraine, that he is “suffering a lot”.

Until Joe Biden's US government banned the broadcast of Russian media, Russian television channels were the only source of information and entertainment for immigrants who do not speak English.

“If I spent three whole days” watching Russian television “I would hate Ukraine” because “it is a very strong propaganda,” says Liliya Myronyuk.

- "Propaganda" -

“The Brighton Beach community has long been bombarded by Russian propaganda,” says Victoria Neznansky, who immigrated to the United States in 1989 with her parents from Odessa.

“As a result, all political issues have been dealt with since Putin's propaganda,” this 60-year-old psychotherapist, who has dedicated her professional life to helping refugees and immigrants, assures AFP.

Now “they don't know who to believe,” he says. “They neither know nor want to know about the new independent and free Ukraine, with many hopes and aspirations and they see it as a Western country that has betrayed Russia,” he says.

The example, he says, is at home with his elderly father, “a product of the Soviet Union”, from Kharkiv.

“Seeing his city torn apart he prefers to say: 'There should have been another way' thinking that Ukraine has been partly to blame in the conflict.”

At 97, he says, “he is reliving the trauma of war,” and in a way it is easier to “settle into denial.”

Faced with the refusal of street people to speak to the press, a Jewish immigrant from Odessa, who smokes a cigarette in front of the pharmacy where she works and who does not want to give her name, sums up: “Nobody wants to say anything that could affect coexistence.”

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