Ukraine-born Jewish NY councilwoman: Everyone should step up; supplies on the way

NEW YORK — New York City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, a Ukraine-born Jewish lawmaker, said community response to the war relief effort has been overwhelming and a planeload of supplies from the city was headed to the Ukraine border.

“It’s a horrific, senseless war. Innocent men, women, and children are dying for absolutely no reason at the hands of a tyrant, a war criminal,” she said.

“I feel terrible watching the place where I was born being torn apart. I feel terrible about the innocent lives that are being lost,” she said. “I would encourage everyone to do something, whatever it is they can do, whether it’s [to] donate money or donate supplies. I think everyone should participate.”

Several organizations and individuals are collaborating in the city to send aid to Ukraine and bordering countries, including a volunteer-run warehouse in Brooklyn that has been overwhelmed with donations, she said.

Vernikov collaborated with the Hatzalah emergency services organization to ship a planeload of medical supplies and food to the Ukrainian border that will likely leave later Thursday.

Her office also opened a drop-off center for donations with the Chabad Neshama Center in Brighton Beach that will collect donations for Ukraine and released information on how to donate to vetted sources.

Vernikov said she was in touch with responders on the ground in Moldova who are lacking crucial supplies, and was trying to arrange an additional plane delivery.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams met with Vernikov and other Ukrainian community leaders to help coordinate a response, and the councilwoman is in touch with New York City Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis to help refugees with visas and refugee status documents.

Vernikov was born in the city of Chernovitz under Soviet rule and immigrated to New York when she was 12. She has cited antisemitism and communism as some of the reasons her family left, and has campaigned against antisemitism and in support of free markets and the police as a politician.

“Even though I was a little girl, I remember standing in lines, long lines, hours of lines with my grandfather just to get a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk for my family,” she told New York’s Republican GOP Convention on Tuesday. “I remember the empty shelves in the stores. I remember antisemitism.”

“We came here for capitalism, for free market economy, for religious freedom, and for opportunity,” she said.

She grew up in Brooklyn and ran a law practice before winning office by unseating a Democrat in a surprise victory in 2021. She is a rare Trump-aligned Republican in New York City politics, one of five Republicans in the 51-member city council, representing the city’s 48th Council District in southern Brooklyn, and serves as the council’s minority whip.

She said Jews from Ukraine have a “complicated history” with the area, referencing the World War II massacre at Babyn Yar by Nazis and Ukrainian collaborators, “and obviously we cannot forget that history.” But she said the election of Volodymyr Zelensky was evidence of progress.

“The fact that they’ve elected a Jewish president in a landslide shows that they have gone a long way since then, they want to be a democracy that is tolerant of every religion, race, and nationality, and I think that we have to as Americans stand up for Ukraine,” she said.

“They want to be free, they want to live in a free democratic place that’s sovereign. They deserve to have protection and they deserve to be able to defend themselves.”