(C) Tennessee Lookout
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In Tennessee and Russia, “sister cities” wait, while US-Ukraine ties grow – Tennessee Lookout [1]
['Benjamin Pounds', 'More From Author', '- December']
Date: 2022-12-22
Amid the war between Russia and Ukraine, an East Tennessee town is changing its relations with the people of both nations.
Oak Ridge, Tennessee is a sister city to Obninsk, Russia, leading collaborations and visitor exchanges between the cities. Both have been centers for nuclear energy research, with Oak Ridge home to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Obninsk to the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering.
Sister Cities wait
The nonprofit organization Sister Cities International promotes partnerships between cities in different countries and traces its origins back to President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s post-World War II efforts to promote citizen diplomacy.
The Oak Ridge City Council voted in March 2022 to end official government involvement in the Sister City program with Obninsk, but the program continues without city funding. A private citizen board manages it and has focused on collaborations between organizations that include soccer leagues and churches rather than just government agencies.
Oak Ridge Mayor Warren Gooch said he wanted to sever the Oak Ridge-Obninsk ties at a special meeting in 2022.
“In a time of war, you must stand for freedom and those fighting for it,” he said, in prepared remarks. “Even as we meet, the Russian army continues its savage attack on the men, women, children and babies of Ukraine.”
Council members added an amendment to keep the program in place and council’s final vote was in keeping with Sister Cities International’s recommendation for cities to maintain their relationships with ones in Russia.
“While suspending or ending a sister city relationship to register disapproval of a foreign government’s actions may seem, on the surface, like a positive policy protest action, it has the complete opposite effect – closing a vital and, ofttimes, last channel of communication with vulnerable or isolated populations,” the Sister Cities website states.
Ken Luckmann, an Oak Ridge Sister City Board member and liaison for the Oak Ridge-Obninsk city partnership, said he still talks to his friends in Russia through social media and has sent electronic Christmas cards to them.
“We have talked about sort of in a sideways way, wishing them well,” he said. Political discussions, he said, were “a little bit unnerving for me and probably for them too.”
Ken Luckmann said the program started with collaborations between scientists at the respective cities’ research facilities, with Tennesseans welcoming Russian visitors by organizing trips to nearby Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
The Oak Ridge-Obninsk Sister City program went on to include a collaboration with Oak Ridge’ First United Methodist Church, in which FUMC volunteers provided aid to Russians suffering from health problems after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
Athletics have also been central to the two cities’ relationship. An Oak Ridge youth soccer team went to Obninsk to challenge a Russian team, which Luckman called “a real fun experience.” In return, an Obninsk soccer team traveled to the states for a match with Knoxville’s Bearden High School, which the Russians won “fairly handily,” said Luckmann.
A resolution of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia improving would be a “yellow light” for the program, said Luckmann. A full “green light” for the program to return would be a more general cooling of relations between the US and Russia.
The Lookout contacted Oak Ridge National Laboratory, but it declined to comment on the issue of the Russia-Ukraine war’s effects on their operations.
Ukraine ties
While ties to Russia may be on hold, Oak Ridge’s role as a research city has brought new families of Ukranians to the city.
Former Oak Ridge resident Grant Ceffalo, who has worked with the environmental consulting firm NorthWind Group on nuclear cleanup projects in Oak Ridge and Chernobyl, moved to Ukraine in December 2021.
He moved back to the US after the war started and he contacted Tatiana Alfimova, an employee of the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant. Ceffalo told Alfimova his house in Oak Ridge was available to house Ukrainian women and children during the war; many adult Ukrainian men stayed to fight.“
“They had nothing when they came,” said Jerry Luckmann, who is married to Ken Luckmann and an Oak Ridge Girl Scouts leader, of the women and children who arrived. “They left everything.”
“‘It beats having bombs thrown on your head which is the ever-present reality,’” she said, quoting one Ukranian now living in Oak Ridge.
Alfimova lives in Oak Ridge and works remotely for the Chernobyl Scientific Data Collection Society. Her two daughters Kseniia (Ksyusha) and Miroslava (Mira) live with her at the Ceffalo house, and her sister-in-law, also with two daughters, came later. Two other Ukrainian families joined them.
One new resident, Mariya (Masha) Rudiuk lives with her infant son Artem and recently married. Another resident of the house, Ohla Kvach, worked as a rhythmic gymnastics coach back in Ukraine and lives in Oak Ridge with her mother Tamara and an 18-month-old daughter Nikol Ilchenko.
Alfimova’s daughters are part of the Girl Scout troop Jerry Luckmann leads. Jerry Luckmann described Ksyusha as a “jabbermouth” but Mira as quieter, and said the girls enjoyed going to the University of Tennessee Arboretum’s butterfly festival to release butterflies.
In October, the troop celebrated Girl Scouts of America’s founder Juliet Low’s birthday with a competition involving catching pancakes on plates.
Afterwards, Jerry Luckmann said, Alfimova sent her a text.
“I have not seen Mira so happy smiling as much as I did this afternoon since she got here,” Luckmann said, quoting Tatiana’s text about the pancake catching competition.
Jerry Luckmann said community members have donated Christmas gifts to the Ukrainian children, an effort in which she’s been involved.
“There’s no way that I’m going to be able to fit all this stuff in those stockings,” she said.
“I can’t imagine it, frankly. And to think that their husbands and sons and grandfathers are still over there,” Jerry Luckmann said. “I don’t think (Ukrainians) can ever go back to the way it was.”
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