Draped in a Ukrainian flag, Vasily Bublikov marched during a recent downtown Chicago demonstration marking 1,000 days since Russia’s full-scale invasion, an unprovoked attack that pit the two nations of his heritage against one another in a rapidly escalating war that threatens global peace. His mother is Ukrainian. His father is Russian. This dual ancestry has spurred a unique pain for Bublikov and others of similar mixed origin as the conflict mounts overseas at an alarming pace, risking international expansion. “It is like my dad beating my mom, it feels like that,” the 41-year-old West Ridge neighborhood resident said during a recent interview with the Tribune. “It’s already almost three years, but sometimes it all feels (unreal). It’s not only about my personal background. Almost everyone in Russia has relatives, friends in Ukraine. It’s the two closest nations.” The fighting reached a flashpoint Tuesday when Russian President Vladimir Putin lowered the threshold for Moscow’s use of nuclear weapons, a change approved shortly after President Joe Biden permitted Ukraine to fire American-supplied longer-range missiles at limited targets in Russia for the first time since the war’s inception. Kyiv launched the first of these missiles into Russia on Tuesday. The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv temporarily shut down Wednesday amid fears of a potential Russian air attack, but resumed operations later that day. International tensions surged again Thursday as Russia fired a new intermediate-range ballistic missile at Ukraine. In ominous comments during a televised address, Putin claimed the missile, dubbed “Oreshnik,” travels 10 times faster than the speed of sound, rendering American air defense systems incapable of intercepting it. The Russian president warned that the new weapon could be used against any Ukrainian ally whose missiles are launched against Russian targets. “In the case of escalation of aggressive actions, we will respond resolutely in a mirror way,” Putin said. Vasily Bublikov and his son Eugene, 11, work on improving their English and Russian languages while doing nightly reading with “The Hobbit” in their West Ridge apartment, Nov. 20, 2024. Bublikov and his wife Veronika Markova both have Russian and Ukrainian heritage. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune) As for Bublikov, while he fears for the safety of relatives and friends on both sides of the Ukrainian-Russian border, the married father of two said he champions Ukraine’s independence and hopes for Putin’s defeat. Born and raised in Russia, Bublikov left fearing persecution for speaking out against the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine; he arrived with his immediate family in Chicago later that year. The former university associate professor has since joined a diaspora of anti-Putin dissidents who continue to oppose the war from around the world while in exile from Russia. Local groups Voice of Free Russia Chicago and Chicago for Democracy in Russia organized a demonstration in support of Ukraine earlier this year on the second anniversary of the invasion, which was attended by around 200. The event was held in solidarity with similar pro-Ukrainian and anti-Putin marches and rallies hosted by Russian diaspora around the world. Bublikov is now seeking asylum to stay in the United States, fearing retribution from Putin’s authoritarian regime if he were to return. “I actively continue to express my anti-war, pro-Ukrainian and opposition to the Russian authorities views on my social media pages. I have already published hundreds of posts, for most of which I can be prosecuted in Russia for political reasons,” he said. “In Russia, similar public statements to mine have resulted in convictions and many years of imprisonment for oppositionists.” Although Russia is his homeland, Bublikov said he supports Biden’s decision to allow deeper strikes into Russian territory. “Ukraine is a victim of aggression and has every right to defend itself by all means,” he added. Veronika Markova and her husband, Vasily Bublikov, with their children, Sofiya, 15, and Eugene, 11, in their West Ridge apartment on Nov. 20, 2024. Markova and Bublikov both have Russian and Ukrainian heritage. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune) The Pentagon recently pledged to send Ukraine at least $275 million in new weapons, as the Biden administration hastens to support the war-torn sovereign nation before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January. This includes a controversial plan to give Ukraine anti-personnel land mines intended to help stall Kremlin forces on the battlefield, a second major expansion of American military bolstering of Kyiv over the last few days. It’s unclear how Trump’s second administration will impact the war in a few weeks. The Republican, who has on multiple occasions praised Putin, also boasted during the campaign that he could end the conflict in Ukraine “in 24 hours,” a claim Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called “very dangerous.” A group of hard-line Republican legislators have in the past decried funding for Ukraine, arguing that America must resolve its border security crisis before distributing more aid to other nations. Yet Bublikov urged the American public and government to continue backing Ukraine, in part to maintain world order and deter Russian encroachment into other countries. If Russia breaks Ukraine’s resistance, this would only whet Putin’s imperial appetite — and Russia’s next targets might be NATO countries such as Poland or the Baltic states, Bublikov predicted. “We know from history that America was forced to interfere in European affairs in both world wars, because the aggressors were not given a tough and decisive rebuff from the very beginning,” he added. “So, history teaches us that if America refuses a leadership position in the democratic world, it ends very badly for everyone. And in the end, the U.S. is still forced to interfere.” Strained family ties The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine horrified 35-year-old Iya Kulagina of west suburban Downers Grove, who was living in the Russian city of St. Petersburg at the time. Her mother is Russian. Her father, who died when she was 7, was Ukrainian. Her stepfather is also Ukrainian. “But what was more horrifying to me was that my mother, my brother and my stepfather supported (the invasion),” she said, through an interpreter. “Just having people close to me supporting this was almost more horrifying than the war. … My stepfather, I don’t understand how he can support it. Because Russia invaded his country and is killing his countrymen. I just don’t understand.” If her father had lived to witness the invasion, Kulagina believes he would have been against the war. “Everybody who knew him said he was a good person, a kind person,” she said. “I would like to think that if he was still alive he would not support it. And I don’t know how he and my mom would get along.” Although Kulagina had lived in Russia, she felt close ties to her Ukrainian heritage and spent summers with her paternal grandparents in Odesa in southern Ukraine. She loved its beaches on the Black Sea, beautiful architecture and the bustling shops and cafes along Deribasovskaya Street, a famed pedestrian walkway in the heart of the city. Traveling there “felt like a holiday, it felt like a big outing,” she recalled. Shortly after the nvasion, Kulagina and her husband protested the attack in the streets of St. Petersburg, at one of many anti-war rallies that erupted in Russia and internationally. Kulagina said her husband was detained by Russian police during the protest. Hundreds of anti-war activists were arrested daily across Russia in the days following the invasion, though the Kremlin sought to downplay the opposition movement and insist most of the nation favored the invasion. When Kulagina went to try to get her husband released, a man in civilian clothing called her a Ukrainian ethnic slur, she recounted. Her husband believed the man was an agent with the Russian Federal Security Service, the successor agency to the Soviet Union-era KGB. “This is when I realized staying in Russia wasn’t very safe and we just had to leave,” she said. She also suffered from strained relationships with loved ones who favored the war. “A lot of our family and friends stopped talking to us because a lot of the people in our social circle supported Putin,” she said. “We felt like we were in a minority.” Kulagina and her husband fled St. Petersburg and arrived in the Chicago area in January 2023, and are seeking asylum in the United States. Although she works two jobs, Kulagina said she attends protests and marches against the war whenever she can. “What I really want to do is protest in Russia. I want to live in Russia,” she said, adding that moving to the U.S. was never part of their plan. She longs for an eventual end to Putin’s rule and a regime change in Russia. “Our hope is that so many people left Russia and there are protests all over the world, I hope that more people would come out and it would make a difference,” she said. “Right now, protesting in Russia is dangerous. The people who try to do something in Russia are insanely brave. But at least I can protest here.” Ukraine victory, freedom for Russians On Feb. 24, 2022, Bublikov awakened before dawn to the rapid fire of cannonades. He was living in Belgorod, Russia, about 25 miles from the Ukraine border, and he said the Russian army had placed rocket launchers near his city. “The day of the invasion was the worst day of my life,” he recalled. “All hopes of avoiding war and democratizing Russia’s political regime collapsed.” Bublikov was 8 years old when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. He remembers watching the red flag with gold sickle and hammer of the U.S.S.R. being lowered for the last time over the Kremlin and the tricolor flag raised in its place, signifying a shift toward democracy for Russia. “My father cried at that moment with happiness, which happened to him extremely rarely,” Bublikov said. He recalled his mother and father — whose one grandparent was also Ukrainian — never saw the separation of Ukraine and other former Soviet republics as a negative phenomenon. They were certain the independence of the Republics would benefit everyone and “Russia and Ukraine will be good neighborly states,” Bublikov recalled. “But the reality turned out to be not so bright,” he added. Here in the Chicago area, Bublikov works at a suburban school as an instructional assistant, mainly helping Russian- and Ukrainian-speaking students, most having “ended up here because of Putin’s aggression,” he added. He said he loves helping these kids adapt to life in the United States, because he knows first-hand how difficult that can be. “From the first days of my work, I saw how their eyes light up with warmth and (the) anxiety goes away, because they can talk to someone on the staff in their native language, Russian or Ukrainian,” he said. “Of course, learning English is a priority for them, but they need that very link that helps integrate into the United States without losing their culture, roots and identity.” A message on his Instagram page reads “Victory for Ukraine. Freedom to the peoples of Russia.” To Bublikov, these two concepts are inextricably connected: Putin’s defeat in Ukraine would weaken his power, a precursor to reform and potential democratization in Russia. “I completely support Ukraine,” he said. “If Putin’s regime will be defeated in Ukraine, it will be good for the Russian people.” The Associated Press contributed. [email protected]