You're reading: US Peace Corps volunteers gladly return to Ukraine after February 2014 suspension during EuroMaidan Revolution

When Kathryn Ridinger of Kent, Ohio first heard that the U.S. Peace Corps program in Ukraine was abruptly suspended at the height of the EuroMaidan Revolution in February 2014, she cried.

Ridinger was one of 239 Peace Corps volunteers that the U.S. government decided to evacuate on Feb. 24, 2014, days after at least 75 anti-government demonstrators were killed by snipers on Feb. 18 and Feb. 20.

But now, more than 16 months after President Viktor Yanukovych fled power, at least 15 volunteers evacuated in 2014 have returned to Ukraine. They came back on May 20.

“They put their lives on hold waiting to come back to Ukraine,” said Denny Robertson, head of Peace Corps Ukraine.

The first group of returnees will be followed by others.

An additional 65 volunteers are scheduled to arrive in October, and 80 more in March.

“By June we’ll have up to 150 volunteers,” Robertson told the Kyiv Post. “We’re amazed at how many people wanted to go to Ukraine, to be a part of the change that is taking place in the country.”

Ridinger first came to Ukraine in March 2013 to teach English at an orphanage and school in the western Ukrainian city of Berezhany, located some 100 kilometers from Lviv. She was very close to her community.

It was hard to say goodbye.

“I was aware of the situation in Ukraine and knew it was for safety reasons,” Ridinger said, but the decision wasn’t easy.

When she returned home, Ridinger used every opportunity possible to educate and speak to people about Ukraine. And she still had hopes to finish teaching at the orphanage where she was assigned in 2014.

“I had expectations that my school would welcome me back,” Ridinger says. So when the chance came she jumped at the first possible date.

More than 2,740 Peace Corps volunteers have served in Ukraine since 1992, when Ukraine’s first President Leonid Kravchuk and U.S. President George Bush signed a bilateral agreement to establish the program. Before the EuroMaidan Revolution, Ukraine had the largest contingency of volunteers among more than 140 countries, averaging 300 at any given time.

Currently, their work is limited to local communities in western and central oblasts. Previously, the program covered the whole nation, including Crimea and easternmost Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts.

They focus on improving English language skills, youth and civil society development. Service usually lasts for two years while they undergo intensive Ukrainian- and Russian-language training.

The biggest challenge now is to present a realistic picture of what is happening in Ukraine, Robertson told the Kyiv Post.

“The political situation is complicated, so how do you present that in a way that reassures people that there’s a lot of good work that can be done – that’s important,” the local Peace Corps director said.

Sabra Ayres, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine from May 1995 to August 1997, believes both countries will benefit from the program’s resumption.

“A big part of the program is the idea of exchanging cultures and ideas,” Ayres says. “Even 20 years after I was a volunteer, so many of my close friends now in the U.S. know a lot about Ukraine and have a general base of knowledge because I came home from being a volunteer.”

She taught English in Cherkasy Oblast’s Kaniv and developed a strong connection to Ukraine. She has also been covering the situation in Ukraine since December 2013 as a journalist, writing mostly for the Los Angeles Times, Al Jazeera America and the Christian Science Monitor.

After service, Ukraine becomes a second home for many volunteers.

Robertson says it’s a kind of social engineering. “They live in little villages; learn how plant potatoes and do other things they wouldn’t do in the U.S.,” Robertson adds with a smile.

He’s certain there has never been a more important time for Peace Corps in Ukraine.

“People are looking West, they are very anxious to learn English – the government declared 2016 the year of English language in Ukraine and they want native English speakers in every school. The Peace Corps goes the last mile, we go places where no other American government program goes and that’s where we feel we make the biggest difference.”

U.S. President John F. Kennedy launched the Peace Corps amid the Cold War by executive order on March 1, 1961. In a speech on Nov. 2, 1960, Kennedy proposed “a peace corps of talented men and women” who would dedicate themselves to the progress and peace of developing countries, according to his presidential library website.

Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova can be reached at [email protected].