- [Anchor] Just ahead on One Detroit.

The Russia-Ukraine war, surging back into the headlines.

A conflict inspiring metro Detroiters with connections to the region to take action.

Coming up.

Local Ukrainians separate fact from fiction.

Ukrainian musicians find ways to protest President Putin's war, while some Russian music students at the University of Michigan lend their support.

It's all coming up on One Detroit.

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- Nissan Foundation and viewers like you (upbeat music) - [Anchor] Just ahead on this week's One Detroit, the invasion of Ukraine began more than seven months ago and it's reported Russia is being hit with setbacks.

Our One Detroit team has been connecting with those who've been impacted abroad as well as right here in Metro Detroit.

We've been sharing their stories about what they're doing in the face of this conflict.

(upbeat music) Coming up the band DakhaBrakha talks about protesting Putin and the invasion through their music.

Also coming up, a modern day Kobzar fights to keep Ukrainian culture alive through his storytelling and songs.

Plus Russian music students at the University of Michigan show solidarity with Ukraine and uplift the community through a benefit concert.

But first up, as the world watches the developments in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, there's concern over what is fact and what is fiction.

Disinformation campaigns led by Russian supporters have spread on the internet making it difficult to distinguish legitimate news stories from fictional headlines.

Two local Ukrainian American attorneys sat down with One Detroit's Bill Kubota to talk about their efforts to tell the real stories of the conflict and to fight back against the false stories online.

Plus, they talk about the support they're providing to others and the changes they wanna see.

(uplifting music) - [Anchor] A rally for Ukraine over at the University of Michigan last weekend.

- My father-in-law is very conservative and he attended that rally with me on Saturday.

A few months ago he was calling Vladimir Putin his man and now he wants to give money to any charity that he can, you know, to end this war.

- [Anchor] Natalia Kujan Gentry, Detroit attorney and Ukrainian American lending a voice to the fight trying to change minds.

- And so I convinced him and I'm sure I convinced other people but the only way you can do that is by telling your very deep personal story to make it real.

- [Anchor] Gentry, a U of M history major, Growing up steeped in tradition and culture.

- We played soccer together.

We played bandura together which is the instrument behind me, I had to pull it out.

- [Anchor] Gentry taught others how to play.

The bandura has a special place right here in Michigan.

(somber singing) Here's the Ukrainian Banduras Chorus, the national ensemble based in metro Detroit.

- We've preserved our language, we've preserved our music, we kept it all alive.

- It's interesting because Ukrainian was my first language even though I was born and raised in metro Detroit.

- Dany Terleckyj's in Chicago now, also an attorney while bringing news to Ukrainian Americans through an online radio screen.

(techno music) - Today on Ukraine Watch, I'm speaking with Hans Petter Midttun I know the true story.

Hey, I'm just a guy one person here with a laptop and a cell phone.

- [Anchor] He's talking to people from all over and inside the war zone.

- Maria and Yuri, please, please stay safe.

Please stay in touch.

I know what's going on and I know the people who can tell the true story and I'm just trying to magnify their voices.

- The communication and the direct pipeline to what's happening is different than any other war, you know?

- Vladimir Putin's never lost a war.

He's invaded sovereign territory four times.

But I think that this time is different because of the social media.

The world is finally starting to see what Ukraine is.

Not that it's some dark Soviet, you know, remnant.

It's a beautiful vibrant metropolis with history that goes back thousands of years.

- The last century's Ukrainian struggle with Russians, the Soviets.

It's been ongoing.

- My grandmother was an immigrant to this country.

She came to Detroit in 1949 after World War II.

- Here's Terleckyj's grandmother symbolizing lady liberty, freedom, chained to a hammer and sickle.

- They organized, they organized their own media for the time.

It wasn't what I'm doing but I'm just doing what they're doing with new technology.

- [Anchor] Ukrainian Americans can connect this war with history they know well and more of us ought to.

- We know about the Armenian genocide.

We know about the Holocaust.

- But no one knows about the Holodomor.

The Holodomor was, it was again a Soviet reaction to you know, what was considered to be mild resistance.

The Soviet idea is that you punish the people anytime that they act up.

- [Anchor] The Holodomor, 1932 to 1933.

An intentional mass starvation that killed many, many millions, mostly Ukrainians.

- So my grandparents, all four of them were young kids when the genocide happened.

They were all less than 10.

Some of their siblings were starved to death.

The world did not know about Ukraine's genocide.

You know, the Iron Curtain was real.

No information came out and no information came in from the outside world.

- [Anchor] Now attorneys Terleckyj and Gentry are networking with others trying to bring Ukrainian refugees to the US.

Nearly 700,000 have fled, mostly women and children.

The men held back to fight the Russians but who else will fight with them?

- Ukrainians have a saying.

(speaking Ukrainian) Your ancestors don't make you Ukrainian.

Your descendants do.

So to every single person in the world who's fighting for freedom and democracy, we are all Ukrainian now.

(somber music) - [Anchor] Next up, the story of a Ukrainian quartet delivering powerful world messages through their music.

DakhaBrakha's unique music style is familiar to audiences at the Detroit Concert of Colors and WDET radio listeners.

When we first talked to them in March, the band had gone into hiding in Ukraine as Russia started waging war on the country.

WDET radio host Ismael Ahmed heard what was happening on the ground in Ukraine and how the band and other citizens were impacted by the conflict.

(upbeat music) (string music playing) - DACA BRCA, likened to Russia's Pussy Riot, persecuted for their fight against political oppression, but DakhaBrakha, they're Ukrainian with a Detroit connection.

- The music is out there.

It has a Ukrainian traditional base but goes every which way.

(somber music) They're big into jazz, they're big into rock.

They even do a little bit of Ukrainian rap but it also has a very classical sound.

It's really hard to pinpoint the style because it's their own style.

(woman singing) - [Anchor] DakhaBrakha's made appearances in the local Concert of Color's music series seen here on Detroit Public TV thanks to Ismael Ahmed.

Ahmed created the series.

He got to know the band through his public radio program.

- Given that I, you know, work at WDET and do This Island Earth which is I guess a world music show but a show that is allowed to go everywhere that's unusual for radio.

It's a good fit.

And so I play that quite a bit.

(chaotic music) - [Anchor] Performances like these, perhaps at risk.

Part of the culture many Ukrainians believe the Russians would like to do away with.

Ahmed's talking with the band's artistic manager on the line from Ukraine.

- Yes, have you been affected by the bombing?

- [Iryna] We can hear it all the time.

Sometimes it's closer, sometimes it's far but my house is still safe.

- I was talking to Iryna Gorban, she's very much part of the band.

She travels with them, she faces everything they face.

- We sleep in the bathroom because, or in the basement because we have this air alarms all the time.

- [Anchor] DakhaBrakha has been protesting war in the Putin regime during their shows for years.

The band members are hunkered down in undisclosed locations.

They're okay for now.

(upbeat music) - It's a mainly women's group and so I don't think men could make that kind of music.

(woman chanting) They conquer their audiences over and over, that the word spreads.

They're now a major world performing group.

(woman chanting) Turns out that their agent, Bill Smith, is an old friend of mine and he is a, I don't know, a discoverer.

He finds some of the best music on the planet and not your normal music.

So he's the one that turned me onto them.

(woman singing) - [Anchor] DakhaBrakha first toured North America in 2013 returning often until COVID hit.

There were plans to come to the US again in late March, but then came war.

- They are literally shelling right now, and one of the things I was warned is that they might have to duck for cover in the middle of the interview or maybe it wouldn't come off.

The Russian authorities are trying to take down internet and all possibility of communications.

So this was done under duress.

But they are brave, and Iryna is brave, and so you know they want the world to know what's going on.

- [Iryna] I dunno how to explain this, but people get used to it.

So now we are all in this kind of stress when we try to be united, try to be calm, try to help each other.

We really believe that it's, as long as we can stay here we will stay here.

I tell this now because now I am like calm and confident but in several hours I don't know what what will be.

So maybe I changed my mind in several hours and not sleep here this night or tomorrow.

So nobody knows.

(woman singing) - Whether it's Concert of Colors or This Island Earth on WDET, we're living in a world where this music is being made, where horrible things are going on and people are struggling but they're also struggling to tell us and they do that through their music.

Music is a powerful force.

I'm happy that I'm able to help get out the word through these musicians.

We have to understand what kind of world we live in and we can't stay numb to things like starvation and refugees and immigration problems and war.

I mean, literally there is war happening all over the planet.

Some smaller wars, some huge wars like this one.

We've got to be involved and the music helps us to do that.

(somber music) Do you think that you will ever be playing music again?

- [Iryna] For sure, no doubt.

And I think we will do it even sooner than than it's expected because I'm sure now the world needs Ukrainian culture to understand the difference between Ukrainian and Russian people and to see their deepness of Ukraine and Ukrainian culture.

(desperate music) - They are a direct target and they've been told that they are one of the most powerful voices in Ukraine against what is happening both culturally and politically.

And so they do these interviews at a great, great risk.

(desperate music) Well, we'd love to have you back in Detroit.

- [Iryna] Thank you.

Thank you.

We really also just, we at least, we have so much because of these two years of break and touring the US.

It's really very moving and very, very great to hear this.

(chaotic music) (applause and cheering) - [Anchor] DakhaBrakha were able to exit Ukraine and has recently been on tour in the US and Europe.

Our next story takes us Hamtramck.

Traveling multi-instrumentalist Jurij Fedinskyj is an American-born Ukrainian who recently left his war-torn country with his family.

He made his way across the east coast, midwest, and parts of Ukraine, entertaining and educating listeners about Ukraine's music and culture and his fight to keep both from being a casualty of the war.

Bill Kubota talks with him about his travels.

(upbeat jingle) (bandura playing) (man singing) - [Bill] Jurij Fedinskyj on tour, a Ukrainian storyteller here from the battlefront.

Back in June, his one man show came to the Book Suey Bookstore in Hamtramck.

(man singing in Ukrainian) - I take every invitation very seriously and try to make it out.

These are all free events, right?

I don't charge anybody anything.

And I used to be Ukrainian American, but I'm not anymore.

Now I'm a Ukrainian American Ukrainian.

(man singing) - [Bill] Fedinskyj grew up in North Carolina, but immigrated to Ukraine years ago.

When the Russians attacked in February he sent his Ukrainian wife and four kids to the US but he stayed as bombs fell, carrying on with an old tradition as a Kobzar, a modern day version, traveling and singing with his custom stringed instruments giving moral support to fellow Ukrainians.

- And I'm doing what the Kobzars did, basically playing a specific repertoire which was created to keep Ukraine Ukrainian, right?

To save our nation, our nationality which represents our values.

Who we are on a musical level, on an emotional level.

Basically a deal in cultural diplomacy, right?

To have a wandering musician who can go everywhere.

(bandura playing) (man singing) - [Bill] Early this summer, Fedinskyj came in to join his family then began his American Kobzar tour.

(bandura playing) (man singing) - I'm basically talking about my experience during the war.

What I do during the war as a musician, reviving a lost Kobzar tradition playing national instruments the kobza, bandura, and torban.

Seeing the positive results of practicing this tradition which was destroyed in 1933 by Stalin, basically to make Ukraine a slave nation.

- [Bill] Fedinskyj builds these instruments himself.

He says they're easier to make than to play.

The Bandura, he likens that to what we know is a zither.

- Because the Bandura is the instrument that you don't have to depress anything, you don't have to fret.

The kobzas you do.

- The torban like the others, but with another set of treble strings.

(uplifting music) - These are sacred national Ukrainian instruments which most Ukrainians don't know.

And how can that be?

You know, can you imagine an American seeing a guitar and saying what is this?

- [Bill] With the war on, Fedinskyj's dispatches went to Facebook.

Here he and his crew of performers shelter in the Kharkiv subway, as the city was attacked.

(speaking Ukrainian) - When Putin is sending his forces to the east right on the third month of the war we decided that's the place for us to be.

So we got in the car, with me and four of my students, and we played hundreds of concerts during that month, mostly on the eastern front.

This is the cities of Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Odessa, but also all points in Ukraine.

(band singing) As the Blues Brothers would say, it's a mission from God.

They went with me, you know, where I told them If you don't want to go, I understand, you know you might get killed.

(singing) And one point I told them, I feel, you know mortal danger, we very well may die.

And if you wanna get out that this would be a good time.

It's good that not everybody evacuated.

There's still people in the cities.

Putin wants us all to flee, to go to the west, and he can very simply take Ukraine and conquer it.

So what do you do?

It's the spirit which defends the country.

- [Bill] Now it's August.

Fedinskyji is going back to Ukraine, his family too, back to live to a safe place he says.

Then he's headed to the front to serve as a Kobzar again.

- I'm convinced that they can't kill me.

There's certain convictions I have and this you might consider this craziness.

It might be completely crazy.

I dunno.

Music is very serious stuff.

I think Woody Guthrie had on his guitar.

This instrument kills fascists.

And it's true, it's true.

(man singing) Eternal memories (applause) Glory to the heroes.

- [Anchor] Since our story first aired, Jurij headed back to Ukraine in August, building new instruments for his next tour.

He says he'll soon be taking his music back to the front lines.

Our connection to Ukraine brings us back to Ann Arbor.

When Russian saxophonist Valentine Kovalev was reading, listening and seeing news about the war in Ukraine he felt compelled to help it citizens.

He created a concert in Ann Arbor to fundraise for families in Ukraine.

We went to that concert and talked to Kovalev.

Here's what he had to say.

(upbeat music) (wind instruments playing) - I believe that music can bind us together in the darkest of times.

And it's our responsibility to use this force as an agent to uplift humanity and help with these kinds of causes.

(saxophone playing) - And for me, it's very important to show as a sign of solidarity with Ukraine, that we are, as Russian citizens, we are against of this war.

I am a saxophonist.

I'm studying here for my master's degree at University of Michigan School of Music, Theater and Dance.

And I am a Russian citizen with deep Ukrainian roots.

So from my father's side his grandparents were from Ukraine.

And also, funny enough my sister just got married to a Ukrainian just few weeks ago.

So we are very worried about them, about his side of the family who is remaining in Ukraine and not willing to flee the country.

(woman singing) - I am a Russian American.

My parents have immigrated here from St. Petersburg in the 1990s.

I also have family in Ukraine.

(women singing) - And whole idea of me doing something about this came to me when at first I read the news online.

I was so terrified and so frustrated about this situation.

So I have decided to offer free lessons to Ukrainian saxophonists online.

And I don't want anything bad happen to them.

So I was thinking a lot of time, how can I help as a musician to bring some hope in our lives?

And so this whole idea of organizing a concert came to my mind.

- [Sasha] It is a way to unite the audience and performers to uplift people in these times as well as, you know bring people together in order to raise funds for helping out on the grounds in Ukraine.

- There is a huge fact of propaganda unfortunately in all of the countries and especially in Russia.

And by bringing this concert to life, I want everyone to know that Russians are against of this invasion and we don't support our government.

(jazz music playing) - I think one of the most important things we can do as musicians again is to organize concerts like these and use these gifts in order to, raise funds and keep the conversation going about international conflicts.

And you know how to help people who are oppressed by these regimes.

(organ playing) All proceeds will be going towards the Jewish Family Services of Washtenaw County which are currently aiding refugees arriving in Michigan from Ukraine, as well as the Ukrainian American Crisis Response Committee and working in the ground on Ukraine.

(saxophone playing) - I hope to bring more awareness to Ukrainian composers and include them in daily basis.

(classical music) (applause) - [Anchor] That will do it for this week's One Detroit.

Thanks for watching.

Make sure to come back for One Detroit Arts and Culture on Mondays at 7:30 PM and head to OneDetroitPBS.org for all the stories we're working on.

Follow us on social media and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

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The Kresge Foundation.

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