Port Townsend worker now in Ukrainian defense training to fight in Russia

Still working remotely while preparing for battle

First published Monday, April 4, 2022 

by Audrey Rogers

Victor Avhust has been working for Port Townsend entrepreneur Frank DePalma of Totera Web Systems since 2014.

He remembers the day he was hired well: Feb. 14, 2014. He remembers clearly because that’s what he sees as the beginning of the war between Ukraine and Russia.

His family is from the Odessa region, an oblast on the northern coast of the Black Sea and a well-populated area of Ukraine. Avhust and his family come from a small town within the oblast and Victor has studied and has friends throughout Ukraine.

In 2014, his parents had moved to Crimea to be closer to the sea. They bought a new apartment and looked forward to family visits.

They didn’t know things would be so different.

Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula shortly thereafter and took the region prisoner in an illegal annexation.

That historic disaster changed things in Avhust’s eyes and even changed his language.

“I switched to Ukrainian in 2017 — I knew Ukrainian from school and university but in everyday life, I used the Russian language. But after 2014, I’ve changed my mind and it took me three years to think through it and in 2017, I switched to Ukrainian,” Avhust said.

His wife had always spoken Ukrainian and four months before the war broke out in February 2022, the couple decided to move to a more Ukrainian-leaning community to be closer to friends and family.

While most of his family is Russian-speaking and that’s what he grew up with, he has turned from Russian culture completely.

As he sees it, he’s not alone.

“We have some sort of renaissance of [the] Ukrainian language, Ukrainian literature, Ukrainian translations, [there are] lots of newly-published translations and they’re really popular. Not just fiction, but everything, stuff helpful for work too,” Avhust said.

He said that it’s necessary for the country and that “it is necessary for being Ukrainian ’cause 99 percent of the population knows Ukrainian, understands Ukrainian, can speak Ukrainian.”

To him, the “language propaganda” is nonsense. “There’s no tension,” he said.

Joining the Fight

Regardless of where language lies in the war, Avhust is no pacifist (although he admits he used to be). He and his wife are in Uzhorrod, a city in the southwest corner of Ukraine, which he referred to as the safest part of the country. Even still, just 100 kilometers away, missiles strike Lviv. He and so many other Ukrainian men train daily with Territorial Defense Forces to manage the conflict, should it come closer.

He explained that maintaining his remote hours at Totera has been challenging while training with the Army everyday, sometimes up to 10 hours. Avhust described this schedule casually, as if he had taken on a second job or a volunteering gig at the library.

He had applied for territory defense the day after Russia invaded. “We have a law that we have to apply but I wanted to apply,” he said.

“Maybe three or five days [later] I got called from [the] Army.”

A week into the war, he was training.

“I’ve changed my life. I try to work some hours, ’cause not all days are taken by the trainings, but I have to be there every day,” he explained.

In the very early days of war, he spent three days on the Slovak border, helping refugees. His main role was to help his fellow Ukrainians find family or friends outside the country and help them find transportation to their loved ones. He handled travel coordinations while other volunteers fed, clothed, and warmed those who were stuck waiting to cross the border for days.

He remembers speaking with one woman there who was leaving because, with one daughter having been killed in Kharkiv bombings, it was time for her to flee and go to her other daughter in the Czech Republic.

He recalled buses of people that had come from bombed territories, saying, “They were without any stuff, they were without luggage, and people were confused.”

But Avhust never went on long without offering some levity. Along with photos of him in his Army uniform, he sent some of him and his wife in magnificent costumes, of his wife in a gown of brilliant Ukrainian blue, adorned with wings to match as wide as she is tall, a smiling dog greeting him at the border, kids playing while they wait to cross into Slovakia with their families. He said children can be happy even in horrible moments.

Still, he said, “Sometimes it hurts.”

He tried to find a translation for an expression he’s been seeing everywhere. It came essentially to: “Let’s overcome this.”

Focusing on that phrase, Avhust said he and his friends know they need to be strong. Not patient, but strong.

“We need to be realists,” he said, “if your enemy wants to just kill you and kill the whole nation.”

Avhust explains that what’s happening now is directly related to what happened in 2014 but that “now, it’s a full-fledged humanitarian disaster.”

Avhust suspects Russia doesn’t like Ukraine’s freedom. He says it’s a big misunderstanding but that, ultimately, Russia won’t acknowledge that Ukraine is a nation where people live, work, and are happy.

He uses the abductions of Ukrainian mayors by Russian forces as an example.

“People in the towns are standing up for their mayors, so they forced Russians to give them their mayors back and put their flag [back up] . . . the towns stood up for their mayors and wanted them back. They [Russia] can’t imagine that a mayor can really be elected ’cause in Russia, it’s mostly appointed by the president or his men,” Avhust explains. He seemed proud of that, proud that his people fight for one another as Russia tries to break them down.

“But,” he continued, “in some towns, they used automatic weapons against people with no armor.”

Again, he recovered quickly with yet another moment of levity.

“But!” he exclaimed, a burst of rejuvenation obvious in his body language as he changed the subject, “We have some polls here throughout the country and 93 percent of people believe we will win.” His grin held steadfast hope.

His wife chimed in from somewhere in the background; he consulted with her, still smiling, and said, “My wife wanted me to [say] that it’s really, really important to close the sky.”

He insisted NATO shouldn’t be afraid to join the fight, but added, laughing, “I am not a military man. I can’t say what is the best situation but I hope our military guys are in contact with your military guys.”