When U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen visited an up-and-coming Everett manufacturer early this month, two employees were excited to hear about the congressman’s travel plans.
The women from Ukraine were among the workers he met Dec. 5 at Electric Mirror. The following week, Larsen would travel to their war-torn and economically hobbled motherland with members of a House Armed Services subcommittee.
“They were so excited for me to go to Ukraine,” Larsen said. “There’s a huge Ukrainian diaspora in the United States, and a lot of them are in Washington state.”
Larsen delivered an in-person greeting to Ukraine on behalf of the women and brought back pictures to share.
This was no mere cultural exchange, though. It was a voyage to countries on the front lines of an increasingly Cold War-like confrontation with Russia.
The main purpose of the trip was to visit Romania and Poland to discuss President Barack Obama’s proposal to cooperate on establishing missile-defense sites in those countries.
Larsen, a Democrat, traveled with five other House members. They flew to neighboring Ukraine to hear from that country’s parliament and defense officials about Russia’s invasion of the country. Leading the delegation was U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., who heads the House Strategic Forces Subcommittee.
“The biggest impression is that the Ukrainian government and people aren’t looking to Russia for help,” Larsen said. “They see themselves as a country invaded. They want the U.S. and the rest of the west to help them.”
The delegation left Dec. 11 and returned on Wednesday.
On Thursday, Obama signed the Ukrainian Freedom Support Act, which authorized additional economic sanctions on Russia as punishment for the takeover of the Crimean peninsula and for supporting the pro-Russian insurgency in eastern Ukraine. Obama said he won’t be acting on the sanctions yet but has them at his future disposal. The bill also includes military and non-military aid to Ukraine.
In Ukraine, Larsen visited the capital, Kiev, to talk to members of the country’s parliament. The delegation flew to Dnipropetrovsk, a major industrial city to the southeast, to meet with military officials.
“They understand that corruption is rife in their country and that they need to institute reforms in their justice system and in their economy and in their military,” Larsen said. “We want to make sure that every dollar spent in Ukraine is a dollar well-spent and not a dollar wasted.”
Ukraine was the second-largest Republic in the Soviet Union after Russia. During the two decades since the USSR’s collapse, the country of 45 million has struggled with graft and aging infrastructure. Its yearly per-capita income of $7,400 is below that of Albania, Cuba or Jamaica, according to the CIA’s World Factbook.
Larsen’s 2nd Congressional District, extending from south Snohomish County to Bellingham, includes more than 7,900 people who identify as Ukrainian, according to Census figures supplied by his office. That ranks sixteenth among all 435 U.S. House districts.
Noah Haglund: 425-339-3465; nhaglund@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @NWhaglund.
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