New Lenox resident hopes he can safely return to the Ukraine next month

Greg Aimaro of New Lenox is hoping to return to Ukraine soon, perhaps in a month.

Aimaro lived in Chernihiv from September 2021 until February and still has an apartment and friends there. He raised $1,000 to help the people of the Ukraine.

But he’s monitoring the situation before making a firm decision.

“The situation changes day by day,” Aimaro said.

The good news for Aimaro is that the Russians have left the Chernihiv, where Aimaro lived and worked, and none of Aimaro’s loved ones – as far as he knows – have died and that he said he is “very, very grateful” for that.

“The city suffered heavy damage and all of its infrastructure was destroyed,” Aimaro said. “But now, power has been restored. My friends have continual internet access, which before they did not have.”

Aimaro is happy Russia did not take Kyiv. He’s also happy that Pryluky, the village from where Aimaro’s great-grandfather lives, was spared, he said.

One of Aimaro’s friends who had moved with her family to their summer home in a village in the vicinity of the region that eventually came under attack is now in Germany working on her fellowship, Aimaro said. He also raised about $1,000 to help people from Ukraine, he said.

“It’s been a very rough month, I would say,” Aimaro said.

One heavy loss for Aimaro is that the state security archive of Chernihiv was destroyed. Aimaro said the archive held about 13,000 documents through the Stalin era.

“When the building was hit, most of the archives were lost,” Aimaro said. “The good news is that my friend had scanned over 1,000 files. Still, it’s a very small amount of the total.”

Aimaro said that archive held the documentation of some terrible events that happened in the region, along with the perpetrators of those events.

“It’s an immense tragedy and an immense personal tragedy for me,” Aimaro said. “I spent around four years of my life working with that archive and doing research for my master’s thesis.”

Aimaro said when he does return to Ukraine, he wants to work with friends to conduct fact-finding missions regarding “crimes committed by Russian soldiers in the region.”

“I’m hoping that will work out,” Aimaro said. “I’d really like to do this. It would be a good way to give back to them.”

Aimaro hopes people will continue their outreach to the people in Ukraine. He feels they will need it for a long time.

“This conflict isn’t new. It’s been going on for eight years,” Aimaro said. “The latest horror that we have seen is just a widening of the earlier conflict.”

Greg Aimaro’s mother, Sarah Aimaro of New Lenox, is very proud of her son. Since Greg returned to New Lenox, he’s worked friends to “re-home” university students in Ukraine to different academic institutions, she said.

Sarah said that Greg also helped her and a group of friends make waterproof sleeping bags from expired surgical drapes and donate them to people from the Urkraine who need them. She’s happy to help the people who helped Greg.

She said when he first rented his apartment, the people there made sure Greg had everything he needed, from bed linens to pots and pans.

“The Ukranians are so loving and giving,” Sarah said.