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美國烏克蘭出生的女議員對援烏投了反對票

(2024-04-26 10:55:38) 下一個

一名烏克蘭出生的女議員對援助投了反對票。 她的家鄉感覺被背叛了

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/25/victoria-spratz-ukrainian-congresswoman-aid-betrayed/

Siobhán O'Grady、Anastacia Galouchka 2024 年 4 月 25 日

周二,32 歲的泰蒂安娜·波利什丘克 (Tetiana Polishchuk) 和她 6 歲的孩子德米特羅 (Dmytro) 和 2 歲的孩子達莎 (Dasha) 參觀 4 月 17 日俄羅斯導彈襲擊烏克蘭切爾尼戈夫的地點,這次襲擊造成 18 人死亡、60 多人受傷。(Oksana Parafeniuk for The 華盛頓郵報)
烏克蘭切爾尼艾夫——在基輔北部的這座小城市裏,眾議員維多利亞·斯帕茨 (R-Ind.) 長大了,當地人曾稱讚她是他們自己的一員,為這位留著金發辮子的好學女孩感到自豪,她移居美國並成為了 第一位烏克蘭出生的國會議員。

但上周斯巴茨投票反對向烏克蘭提供 610 億美元的援助計劃後,一些人的自豪感變成了憤怒和背叛感——這種感覺變得更加刺痛,因為她投了“反對”票,幾天前切爾尼戈夫在早高峰時段遭到轟炸,造成人員傷亡。 18人。

“她不再是烏克蘭人了,我看到了這一點,”50 歲的納塔利婭·赫梅爾尼茨卡 (Natalia Khmelnytska) 說,她是斯巴茨就讀的 15 號學校的一名教師,她住在這位女議員長大的公寓樓裏。 “我們很失望。 我們很沮喪。”

“起初我們為她感到非常自豪,我們認為她想支持我們,”赫梅爾尼茨卡補充道。 “但現在我們看到政治和事業高於我們的利益。”

65 歲的曆史老師瓦倫蒂娜·魯德諾克 (Valentyna Rudenok) 是一名曆史老師,斯巴茨在學校讀書時她是一名圖書管理員,她記得偷偷給這位青少年偷了額外的書。她說,得知一名以前的學生當選為國會議員,她感到很自豪。 但魯德諾克表示,她對斯巴茨的投票感到不安。

“當我們讀到這件事時,我們隻是不明白——就像她變成了另一個人,”她說。 “這令人震驚,因為這位女士在她的人生中走了這麽遠,她所處的位置實際上可以影響和幫助我們的一座城市或她接受教育的一所學校。”

過去兩年,已有8名15校畢業生在前線戰鬥中犧牲。 俄羅斯的空襲已打碎了該建築 88 扇窗戶。 管理人員在一樓設立了一個博物館,展示學生收集的戰爭證據:炮彈碎片、俄羅斯飛機的碎片、死去的俄羅斯士兵的製服。

在國會山,即使在共和黨人中,斯巴茨也是出了名的反複無常。

她於 2020 年首次作為唐納德·特朗普總統的支持者當選,去年宣布不會再次競選,但一年後又改變了決定,理由是她在“暴政”下成長。 她現在麵臨著一場競爭激烈的初選。 一位挑戰者播放了電視廣告,指責她將“烏克蘭優先”置於保護美國邊境的安全之上。

斯巴茨的“反對”票是她從一位在家鄉參觀戰爭廢墟的親烏克蘭倡導者轉變為烏克蘭總統弗拉基米爾·澤連斯基的批評者的轉變的最新轉折,與共和黨最右翼陣營保持一致。

她在一封電子郵件中為自己的投票進行了辯護,稱她為自己的傳統感到自豪,但“認為作為美國人,我的忠誠度不會忠於選舉我代表他們的人民,也不忠於我的祖國,這實際上是無禮的,也是非美國人的”。 家人和孩子回到了印第安納州的家鄉,但回到了我 24 年前離開的國家的一些外國政府。”

然而,她的曆史與烏克蘭的曆史密不可分,而且她一再利用它來為自己謀取利益。

2022 年 2 月俄羅斯入侵後,軍隊迅速向距離俄羅斯邊境僅 50 英裏的切爾尼戈夫推進。 斯巴茨的祖母是被困者之一,這座城市遭到持續的炮擊和空投。 許多居民死亡。 (她的祖母在襲擊中幸存下來,但後來去世,享年 95 歲。)

斯巴茨於 2022 年 4 月訪問了這座城市,就在幾周前,俄羅斯軍隊未能占領這座城市並撤退。 居民們睡在地下,沒有電,隻能在外麵生火做飯。 她就讀高中的 15 號學校的地下室裏睡著數百人。

當時會見她的該市代理市長奧列克桑德·洛馬科 (Oleksandr Lomako) 認為這次旅行是勇敢的支持跡象。 斯巴茨的轉變讓他大吃一驚。 “我非常失望,”他說。

“她來過這裏,”洛馬科補充道。 他說,她看到的破壞和她遇到的失去親人的人“不是來自新聞,不是來自福克斯新聞或保守派渠道。”

俄羅斯入侵後,眾議院共和黨人急切地將麥克風遞給斯巴茨,分享她的故事。 她熱情地保衛祖國,身穿藍色和黃色衣服,批評拜登總統在入侵之前沒有對俄羅斯實施更多製裁,並承諾為援助而戰。

當她從 2022 年 4 月的訪問歸來時,她投票支持了向烏克蘭提供 400 億美元的法案,並在拜登簽署一項迅速增加軍事支持的法律時站在他一邊。

出生於烏克蘭的眾議員維多利亞·斯巴茨(印第安納州共和黨人)稱俄羅斯對烏克蘭的入侵是“種族滅絕”,並呼籲拜登總統采取更多行動。 (視頻:華盛頓郵報)

但到了那個夏天,斯巴茨開始批評澤倫斯基——在國會中得到廣泛關注

作為一名戰爭英雄——敦促他“停止玩弄政治和戲劇”。 斯巴茨表示,國會應該對援助施加條件,並加強對資金的監督——共和黨人已經放大了這一話題。

斯巴茨的言論激怒了基輔。 外交部發言人奧列格·尼科連科(Oleg Nikolenko)在臉書上發帖稱,他已告訴斯巴茨“不要再試圖利用……烏克蘭人的悲痛來賺取額外的政治資本。”

斯巴茨的家人也為這種悲痛所感動。

1978 年,她原名維多利亞·庫爾黑科 (Viktoria Kulheyko),出生於當時屬於蘇聯的諾西夫卡鎮。 她搬到切爾尼戈夫上幼兒園,1986 年,她的工程師父親在切爾諾貝利核災難後提供了幫助,使他暴露在輻射下,後來導致了癌症。

1991 年烏克蘭宣布獨立時,斯巴茨隻有 12 歲。那一年,她的父親去世了。

他的公司幫助支付她在基輔的大學學費,2000 年,她在遇到丈夫傑森 (Jason) 後移民到美國。 他們定居在他的家鄉印第安納州,並育有兩個女兒。 在當選印第安納州參議員之前,她從事會計和房地產工作。

70 歲的 Oleksandr Serdyuk 是 Spartz 父親的密友,從小就認識她,並在 2022 年 Spartz 來訪時見到了她。

謝爾杜克表示,他對她的投票感到失望。 “我並不真正相信言語,我相信行動,”他說。 “她投票的方式和修正案更生動地向我展示了她的意圖。”

謝爾杜克說,像斯巴茨一樣,烏克蘭人也擔心腐敗,但美國的援助對於烏克蘭的生存至關重要。

“我理解反腐敗的鬥爭,”他在辦公室窗外響起空襲警報時說道。 “但你犧牲的是我們的國家。 ......任何政治動機或選舉動機都不能成為這麽多人死亡的理由。”

斯巴茨不僅參與阻止援助法案,還推動修正案以減少援助計劃並限製對烏克蘭的其他援助。

“拜登總統和澤倫斯基總統讓烏克蘭人民失望了,”斯巴茨周六在投票前在眾議院表示。 斯巴茨在給《華盛頓郵報》的電子郵件中表示,她“為烏克蘭人民和前線戰士感到難過,他們選舉了糟糕的領導人,並為此付出了高昂的代價。”

本周,在 15 號學校的走廊裏,工作人員準備了自己的援助物資:為烏克蘭軍隊編織迷彩網。 當防空警報響起時,學生們紛紛湧向地下室。 同一棟建築中仍然保存著斯巴茨的一些曆史記錄,包括她 20 世紀 90 年代初的成績,這些成績是按 1 到 5 的等級手寫在主任保存在她保險箱裏的泛黃筆記本上的。

曆史老師魯德諾克說,如果她現在能與斯巴茨交談,她會注意到這位女議員的孩子們——在印第安納州很安全——“不會在晚上被空襲警報吵醒。”

“我會問她這是怎麽發生的,”她說。 “誰能把她得罪得這麽嚴重?”

在斯巴茨兒時位於切爾尼戈夫的公寓樓外的長凳上,兩名老年婦女猜測她為何投了“反對票”。 他們接受《華盛頓郵報》采訪時表示,為了保持與斯巴茨家人的關係,隻透露姓名。

其中一位名叫哈利娜(Halyna),為斯巴茨辯護。 “我認為她不希望烏克蘭發生任何不好的事情,”哈利納說。 “她支持特朗普,所以她被迫那樣投票。 她不是國家的敵人。 ……她沒有其他選擇。”

另一位名叫內莉亞(Nelia)的人則不確定:“我們不知道她有什麽選擇,也不知道她為什麽會這樣投票。”

在諾西夫卡村,一名婦女去開門,鄰居們說這所房子屬於斯巴茨的親戚。 當被問及她與國會女議員是否有關係時,她說:“我會把人們的舌頭扯下來。” “沒有意見。”然後她關上門。

A Ukraine-born congresswoman voted no on aid. Her hometown feels betrayed.

By ,  Anastacia Galouchka April 25, 2024
 
Tetiana Polishchuk, 32, and her children Dmytro, 6, and Dasha, 2, on Tuesday look at the site of an April 17 Russian missile strike in Chernihiv, Ukraine, that killed 18 people and wounded more than 60. (Oksana Parafeniuk for The Washington Post)

CHERNIHIV, Ukraine — In this small city north of Kyiv where Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) grew up, locals once lauded her as one of their own — proud of the studious girl with blonde pigtails who moved to America and became the first Ukrainian-born member of Congress.

But after Spartz voted against a $61 billion aid package for Ukraine last week, that pride for some turned to anger and a sense of betrayal — feelings made more raw because her “no” vote came days after Chernihiv was bombed during morning rush hour, killing 18 people.

“She is not Ukrainian anymore, and I see this,” said Natalia Khmelnytska, 50, a teacher at School Number 15, where Spartz studied, and who lives in the apartment block where the congresswoman grew up. “We are disappointed. We are frustrated.”

“At first we were very proud of her and we thought she wanted to support us,” Khmelnytska added. “But now we see that politics and careers are higher than our interests.”

Valentyna Rudenok, 65, a history teacher who was a librarian when Spartz studied at the school and remembers sneaking the teenager extra books, said she was proud to learn a former student was elected to Congress. But Rudenok said she is upset by Spartz’s vote.

“When we read about it, we just didn’t understand — it was like she became a different person,” she said. “It was shocking because this woman got so far in her life and is in a position where she could actually influence and help our one city or our one school in which she was educated.”

In the past two years, eight graduates of School 15 have been killed fighting on the front lines. Russian strikes have broken 88 of the building’s windows. Administrators set up a museum on the first floor to display evidence of the war collected by students: shell fragments, a piece of a Russian airplane, a dead Russian soldier’s uniform.

On Capitol Hill, even among Republicans, Spartz is known to be erratic.

First elected in 2020 as a supporter of President Donald Trump, she announced last year that she would not run again, only to reverse her decision a year later, citing her upbringing “under tyranny” as a motivation. She now faces a competitive primary; one challenger has aired television ads accusing her of putting “Ukraine first” over securing the U.S. border.

Spartz’s “no” vote was the latest twist in her transformation from a pro-Ukraine advocate who toured war wreckage in her hometown to a critic of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in line with the GOP’s most right-wing camp.

In an email, she defended her vote, saying she is proud of her heritage but that it is “actually offensive and un-American to think that as an American my loyalty would not be to the people who elected me to represent them and to my family and children back home in Indiana, but to some foreign government in the country I left 24 years ago.”

Her history, however, is inseparable from Ukraine’s and she has used it repeatedly to her advantage.

After Russia invaded in February 2022, troops advanced quickly toward Chernihiv, just 50 miles from the Russian border. Spartz’s grandmother was among those trapped as the city came under constant shelling and aerial bombs. Many residents died. (Her grandmother survived the attacks but later died at age 95.)

Spartz visited in April 2022, just weeks after Russian forces failed to capture the city and retreated. Residents had slept underground and survived without electricity, cooking over fires outside. Hundreds slept in the basement of School Number 15, where she attended high school.

The city’s acting mayor, Oleksandr Lomako, who met her then, saw the trip as a brave sign of support. Spartz’s shift has stunned him. “I’m very disappointed,” he said.

“She’s been here,” Lomako added. The destruction she saw and people she met who lost loved ones, he said, “is not from the news, not from Fox News or conservative channels.”

After Russia’s invasion, House Republicans eagerly handed Spartz the microphone to share her story. She made passionate defenses of her homeland, wore blue and yellow, criticized President Biden for not imposing more sanctions on Russia before the invasion, and pledged to fight for aid.

When she returned from her April 2022 trip, she voted for bills sending $40 billion to Ukraine and stood by Biden’s side as he signed a law to rapidly ramp up military support.

Ukraine-born Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) called the Russian invasion of Ukraine a "genocide" and called on President Biden to do more. (Video: The Washington Post)

But by that summer, Spartz began criticizing Zelensky — widely seen in Congress as a war hero — urging him to “stop playing politics and theater.” Spartz said Congress should impose conditions on aid and more oversight of funds — a talking point Republicans have amplified.

Spartz’s rhetoric rankled Kyiv. Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, posted on Facebook that he had told Spartz “to stop trying to earn extra political capital on … the grief of Ukrainians.”

Spartz’s own family has been touched by that grief.

She was born Viktoria Kulheyko in 1978 in the town of Nosivka, then part of the Soviet Union. She moved to Chernihiv for kindergarten and in 1986, her father, an engineer, helped in the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, exposing him to radiation that later caused cancer.

Spartz was 12 when Ukraine declared independence in 1991. Her father died that year.

His company helped pay for her college education in Kyiv and in 2000, she immigrated after meeting her husband, Jason. They settled in Indiana, his home state, and had two daughters. She worked in accounting and real estate before being elected to Indiana’s state senate.

Oleksandr Serdyuk, 70, a close friend of Spartz’s father who has known her since she was a child, met with her when she visited in 2022.

Serdyuk said he was disappointed by her vote. “I don’t really trust in words, I trust in actions,” he said. “The way she voted, the amendments, show me a lot more colorfully what her intentions are.”

Serdyuk said that like Spartz, Ukrainians worry about corruption, but that the U.S. aid is essential to Ukraine’s survival.

“I understand the fight against corruption,” he said as air raid sirens blared outside his office window. “But what you’re sacrificing is our state. … Any political motives or election motives don’t justify the deaths of so many people.”

Spartz not only joined in blocking the aid bill but pushed amendments to reduce the package and limit other help to Ukraine.

“President Biden and President Zelensky failed the Ukrainian people,” Spartz said on the House floor Saturday before the vote. In her email to The Washington Post, Spartz said she feels “bad for the Ukrainian people and fighters on the front lines who have been electing bad leaders and paying a very high price for it.”

In a hallway of School 15 this week, staff prepared their own aid: knitting camouflage nets for Ukrainian troops. When air raid sirens wail, students rush to the basement. This same building still houses bits of Spartz’s history, including her grades from the early 1990s, handwritten on a scale of 1 to 5 in yellowed notebooks the director keeps in her safe.

If she could speak to Spartz now, Rudenok, the history teacher, said she would note that the congresswoman’s children — safe in Indiana — “are not waking up at night from air raid sirens.”

“I would ask her how did this happen,” she said. “Who could have offended her so badly?”

On a bench outside Spartz’s childhood apartment building in Chernihiv, two elderly women speculated on why she voted “no.” They spoke to The Post on the condition that they be identified only by first name to preserve relations with Spartz’s family.

One, Halyna, defended Spartz. “I don’t think she wants anything bad to happen to Ukraine,” Halyna said. “She’s with Trump, so she’s forced to vote that way. She’s not an enemy of the state. … She didn’t have any other option.”

The other, Nelia, was not sure: “We don’t know what her options were or why she voted the way she did.”

In the village of Nosivka, a woman answered the door at a home that neighbors said belonged to Spartz’s relatives. “I will rip people’s tongues out,” she said when asked if she was related to the congresswoman. “No comment.”

Then she slammed the door.

Sotomayor reported from Washington.

是她:唯一烏克蘭裔的眾議員給援烏法案投了反對票

2024-04-22  發布於:安徽省

美國眾議院通過對烏克蘭援助一事引發高度關注,隨後關於投票的更多細節也披露出來。其中唯一一名烏克蘭裔的議員給援烏法案投了反對票,隨即引起極大爭議。

華盛頓郵報消息,在早些時候進行的對烏克蘭援助的法案投票中,唯一的烏克蘭裔眾議員維多利亞·庫爾蓋科(Victoria Spartz)卻沒有讚成該議案。而是令人意外地投出了反對票。

據悉,庫爾蓋科是土生土長的烏克蘭人,在二十歲之前生活軌跡也幾乎全在烏克蘭大地。

其人1978年出生於烏克蘭的諾西夫卡,學生時代也是就讀的烏克蘭學校,並畢業於基輔國立經濟大學。在校期間庫爾蓋科成績優異,取得了理學學士以及企業管理的碩士學位。在2000年,她開始移民至美國,並於六年後正式取得美國身份,同時攻讀了印第安納-普渡大學的會計學碩士學位。

學業有成的庫爾蓋科隨後從政,當了印第安納州第5國會選區的一名眾議員。不少烏克蘭民眾以為,盡管移民海外,但從她的生活與學習軌跡看,應該對烏克蘭懷有不少的感情才是。畢竟她不是祖上就移居外國的,而是在烏克蘭生活了二十多年。

此事在烏克蘭也引起極大反響,事實上這也不是庫爾蓋科第一次引發爭議,早在2022年她就曾反對美國援助烏克蘭。報道同時分析,其實既然是投票,有反對也正常。盡管她烏克蘭裔的身份包含了更多的“場外因素”。

但在場內,她投下反對票也是她作為議員的權利。

而對於議員來說,首先要代表的肯定是其選區內民眾的意願,她投反對票,很大程度也是取決於對印第安納州民眾的想法。

但她投下的反對票,在烏克蘭還是受到了大量指責。另一方麵,烏克蘭總統澤連斯基在4月21日的講話中也再次回應了援烏法案。

澤連斯基表示:我們將繼續與美國各級合作夥伴合作,確保美國參議院按時通過烏克蘭援助計劃。對於烏克蘭裔議員庫爾蓋科投反對票一事,澤連斯基沒有作過多回應。

隻是強調希望援助早日抵達烏克蘭,以鼓舞前線士兵。

目前庫爾蓋科個人尚未回應外界爭議。

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