Kaniv Residents Share Their Pain
On Valentine’s Day, a Sock Hop and Spaghetti Feed will be held at the Sonoma Valley’s Women’s Club to raise funds for Sonoma’s Ukrainian Sister City, Kaniv. To provide context for that event, the Sonoma Sun reached out to residents of Kaniv, through Tarney Baldinger of Sonoma, who maintains a years-long relationship with many Kaniv residents. What follows are the thoughts of several Kaniv residents about life under siege.
Writes Baldinger of these reports, “ Ukrainians, by nature, do not complain. They are reluctant to speak about the war and instead speak of inevitable victory. We must understand that when there is no electricity there are no elevators, no pumps for water. When there is no water, there is no heating for most homes. Stored drinking water freezes solid. Don’t even think about toilets! They are experiencing historical cold and snowfall. Next week it will be down to five degrees in the daytime and minus seven degrees Fahrenheit at night. Kaniv’s population is about that of Sonoma Valley.
From Lyubov Minenko, the artist whose work Baldinger displays in Sonoma:…