Shopping shows local support for Ukraine

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This article was published 05/03/2022 (1025 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

RUSLAN and Nadia Zeleniuk were nearly run off their feet Friday, as their cramped Selkirk Avenue shop filled up with customers looking to support Ukraine with their wallets.

Last week, a would-be patron had to buzz the door to even get in Svitoch Ukrainian Export & Import. Now, a shopper has to find space among a dozen others to browse the cultural wares lining the walls: pysanka Easter egg kits, traditional vyshyvanka shirts and glassware.

A couple leaning on the jewelry counter were buying 20 of the ornately patterned headscarves stacked behind the till.

The Zeleniuks have been so busy since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began just over a week ago, they’ve run out of the blue-and-yellow flags of their home country, selling hundreds.

“It’s a sad occasion, but we are overwhelmed with support,” Ruslan said.

Now, when they lock up at the end of the day, Nadia and about eight volunteers spend their evenings sewing flags, big, medium, small, out of material the shop acquired. All of the proceeds go to support military and humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.

“We’re sewing them right now, constantly. Our volunteers are working overnight and we’re selling them out in the morning,” said Ruslan, who moved to Canada in 1991 and opened the Winnipeg shop in 1993.

The sewers can do maybe 80 pocket-sized flags a night, but the full-sized ones, it’s harder to say. They double-stitch them, Nadia explained, as they don’t want to sell an inferior product.

On Friday, only one full-sized flag was left: a man had paid for it days before, and the Zeleniuks kept it in the back of the shop. They don’t have a waiting list — if you want a flag, you must come before the door opens at 10 a.m., Nadia said. Every day, two or three people are waiting.

It’s not just recent immigrants and longtime Ukrainian-Canadians packing the store each day, either.

“It’s overwhelming. It’s Métis, it’s First Nations… All the different communities, they are Ukrainian for a day,” Ruslan said. “We are so, so glad.”

The phone rang, as the Zeleniuks worked to help the customers, jumping between the till and back. Nadia told one customer holding a yellow ballcap emblazoned with Ukraine’s coat-of-arms it was a child’s size — they had run out of anything larger, but he could buy an army cap if he wanted or maybe come back next week.

Later, as she held one of the Ukrainian flags she had stitched, Nadia began to tear up, when asked how she has been feeling.

“My mom and family… my husband’s family… my friends are fighting,” she said. “It’s really hard for us.”

The Zeleniuks are trying to keep in touch with family and loved ones back home. On Friday, Nadia spoke with her mother by phone at 7 a.m., just to ask if she was OK.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @erik_pindera