“I want you guys to take care of your government. You have more rights than we do.”
Viktoriia Pavnova is a five-foot-nothing live wire of powerhouse, determination, and grit, shot through with stand-up comic. She wears full sleeve tattoos of, among other things, a Timberwolf, a screaming Medusa, and “Russian Warship, Go Fuck Yourself” in Ukrainian.
Watching customers go unattended in one of her jobs as a cook, bartender, and food truck owner is “like a dagger” in her heart. Her brand is work ethic and unflappability, holding down three jobs as early as tweendom, knowing that money for her family first, and herself second, would be her ticket to freedom. As a teenager, she felt like the world was her oyster. “I felt like I could do anything.”
Donetsk, Ukraine in the early 2000s, Viktoriia describes an idyllic upbringing. No crime, she says, aside from neighborhood drunkards, beautiful weather, sublime food, lots of opportunity for a go-getter such as herself.
By the time she was a teenager, she says she she was making more money than her father. She even employed him as a driver, and supplemented her mom’s income as a housekeeper. But then, she says, all of her jobs in Ukraine became “complicated.”
Gradually, or all of a sudden, Viktoriia doesn’t quite remember, things started to change.
No more could she work in a coffee shop because everyone was buying cheap coffee and making it at home. She couldn’t work in a restaurant, because no one was going out to restaurants. She couldn’t work in a store, because no one was buying anything except for bare necessities. “Everyone was just trying to survive.”
“One day, you realize you can’t walk anywhere and not be looking over your shoulder. You can’t walk with your airpods listening to your favorite music. You have to look and see who is walking behind you. There were criminals. They were taking people’s lives. These were people who did not care about life.”
The Russian government, she says, offered people money and power to start a campaign of terror on Ukrainian cities like hers.
“I remember when I finally said ‘I don’t want to live here anymore.’ There were teenagers, 17-year-old guys who didn’t know anything about life, walking around not just my city but my home, walking around with guns. They were not stable. The [Russian] government gave them guns. They gave them the power to check ID’s. And who was taking responsibility for this? Nobody.”
Donetsk was under occupation.
“If we wanted some tragic drama, we could stay there.”
They did not. So her family made a plan for Viktoriia and her twin sister Sasha to leave. They were 17 years old.
The hardest part at the time, she says, was the look on her parent’s faces when they went. “I caught the fear in my parent’s eyes.”
In April of that year, 2014, Russian-backed separatists officially seized control of the city of Donetsk, declaring it the capital of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic.”
“I remember it was really hard because we hadn’t traveled at all. This was our first trip away from home, like ever, and we were alone. Everything was complicated. How to cook, how to clean, how to survive without a job, without friends.”
By the time they left their hometown, all connection to home was knocked out. No power, no internet. Overnight, everything they knew was gone.
“One day we were completely in a safe space. Everything was cool. We knew every person in our city. Everything is nice. We had our favorite bakery, we had our best corner where there was delicious coffee. Like everyone, we had our habits. And then when we left, it was months before we could reach out to our parents and ask even simple questions like ‘How long should the water boil before I drop the pasta in,’ you know? We left with backpacks. We had nothing on us.”
They pushed on. They went to Kyiv, they went to Poland, they went to Estonia.“I felt like it was the end. Not just the end of my life, but the end of the world,” she remembers.
For years Viktoriia and Sasha lived like this, hustling, sending money home to care for their dad who was now sick with cancer, and extended family who did not have a viable way to make money in Donetsk anymore. Her dad, who used to sell cars, had only one option for work, and that was to work in a factory. And even if he did want to work in the factory, which he didn’t, the government was now forcing the factory workers to go out and raise Russian flags.
“And if they refused, they would get fired right away. My dad was not going to do that at all. To raise a Russian flag and say ‘We want Russia here?’ He said ‘No.’” It was up to Viktoriia and Sasha to take care of the family.
In 2022, what is now known as the second wave of the Russo-Ukrainian War, the Donetsk region of Ukraine was in the geographical heart of the war’s massive escalation, marked by a full-scale military invasion with the siege of Mariupol, which sits 65 miles south of Donetsk. Groups like Human Rights Watch estimate that up to 10,000 people died in the siege, though those estimates may be low. The Red Cross described the situation in Mariupol as “apocalyptic,” with war crimes including intentional starvation of civilians widely reported.
Viktoriia and Sasha were able secure entry into the United States under “Uniting for Ukraine,” a US government program launched that year to give displaced Ukrainian citizens a fast, legal way to enter and stay in the United States temporarily for up to two years.
So they pushed on, and into the US, and Minnesota.
Within a few days of being placed in a temporary apartment in Minneapolis, Viktoriia had a job at the Ukrainian eating institution Kramarczuk’s, and insisted on speaking English only, so that she could learn quickly. About four years later, she’s fluent. But keeping her legal immigration status has been a daily chess game. No day has passed without frustrating bureaucratic research that often feels like it leads nowhere. She estimates about half of her earnings are spent on lawyers and other details of just trying to remain in the country legally.
She was able to secure an investor visa, spending her life savings of $50,000 on a food truck with her business partner Walter Anastazievsky, a second-generation Ukrainian Minnesotan. He’s got a “Go Fuck Yourself Russian Warship” tattoo to match hers.
They named the truck Kozak Corner, after the legendary freedom fighters who symbolize Ukrainian independence and self-governance. The truck has become a renowned local gathering space for other Ukrainian immigrants and refugees seeking a taste of home. The community it has garnered has been crucial, Viktoriia says.
“Imagine after a hard day working two jobs you can’t even go through the Burger King drive-thru because the person on the other side can’t understand you.”
At Kozak corner, all is understood, if only for an hour. They serve Donetsk-style Shawarma wraps, pierogi peppered with chopped Ukrainian sausage, the unofficial national Ukrainian dish of garlic potatoes; but the most important thing they serve is a sense of belonging.
But now, all is in question again. Along with about a million other refugees from 13 countries, Viktoriia and Sasha face forced deportation because of the revocation of Temporary Protected Status by the Trump Administration. They are being told they must leave the country within the next couple of months. Some people in her community are preparing for the worst.
“I feel like I’m losing my life again.”
”I’m basically a model citizen,” she says, working several jobs, bringing entrepreneurship, creating jobs, and learning the customs of what it means to be an American. “And I feel like I have no future anymore.”
She’s pragmatic about any hope to ever return to Ukraine. Her homeland isn’t there anymore, and she doesn’t even like to think about the memories.
“Everything there is already different. Different people, different culture, different food, different language. My memories aren’t warm at all anymore. It’s depressing.” She adds that she’s even lost family members to the Russian propaganda machine. And, who would she be if she returned to her home country, now occupied and understood by a new generation of people?
“People there are already growing up in a new life. I would be like the guys who came and took everything from my people. Someone born 10 years ago– they have no idea this is not their home. I don’t want to be that person. I focus on the future.”
But what is that future? She doesn’t know. Like everyone, Viktoriia just wants a normal life.
“I think the biggest dream for me and for all Ukrainians is to finally stop running.”
When I ask how she isn’t currently falling into despair, she answers this way:
“Who says I’m not? I sleep a lot these days. I run hard, but right now I feel like I’m running to nowhere. There is no light in front of me.”
And yet she says, don’t feel sorry for her. “Crying in your pillow” accomplishes nothing.
Instead, she instructs us: Fight for your rights, since you have them.
“Don’t get distracted.”
Wow. She sounds a laptop incredible and it’s such an important story to keep telling, thanks for giving her this forum.