T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY Marshalltown Mayor and Acting City Administrator Joel Greer, front, addresses Vladyslav Sukhliak, the mayor of Zdolbuniv, Ukraine, during a virtual meeting between the sister cities on Wednesday morning. Also pictured are City Clerk Alicia Hunter, Councilor Mark Mitchell and Councilor Mike Ladehoff.

After a brief initial meeting last fall, Mayor/Acting City Administrator Joel Greer, Councilor and Mayor Pro Tem Mike Ladehoff, Councilor Mark Mitchell, Councilor Greg Nichols and City Clerk Alicia Hunter, who were later joined by Police Chief Mike Tupper, spent about a half hour meeting with representatives from Marshalltown’s Ukrainian sister city of Zdolbuniv on Wednesday morning over Microsoft Teams to discuss concrete goals for cooperation and partnership in the near future.

With interpreters Lana Ramer and Victoria Pryimak translating the conversation from English to Ukrainian and vice versa, the Marshalltown contingent primarily spoke with Zdolbuniv Mayor Vladyslav Sukhliak, who was joined by the city’s director of international relations and the first deputy mayor. Zdolbuniv, which is located in the northwest part of the country, is similarly sized with around 25,000 residents.

The ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia, which has now raged for over two years, loomed large over the discussion, and Sukhliak was quick to express his gratitude to the U.S. for all of the assistance it has provided thus far. Additionally, a handful of Ukrainian families have actually been relocated to Marshalltown and Marshall County, and Ladehoff has served as a leader in the Marshalltown United for Ukraine group that has helped them land on their feet in America.

Once the pleasantries had concluded, Sukhliak suggested having children from Zdolbuniv create artwork about life during the war and send them to Marshalltown. Ladehoff commented that the stories of the displaced families being shared in the T-R has brought a heightened awareness to the challenges the country faces.

“Running a city under normal circumstances is difficult sometimes, but under the circumstances that you have, it must be so much harder,” he said.

Ladehoff credited the Marshalltown community for welcoming the families, noting that many of their children are now attending the school districts and the parents have found employment with another family potentially coming soon.

Both mayors were happy to find themselves on the same page about improving the relationship going forward and continuing to collaborate, and Sukhliak was especially appreciative of the fact that he received a key to the city of Marshalltown. The interpreters also noted a visit from Steve Patterson, the mayor of Athens, Ohio, to Ostroh, Ukraine, and hoped a similar trip might be in the cards for Marshalltown’s leaders.

Another key priority Sukhliak highlighted is the need for rehabilitating the servicemembers who are returning from a brutal war. Back in February, a Ukrainian delegation visited the Iowa Veterans Home to learn more about the practices, and Greer promised to share contact information for the directors of the local hospital and clinics as well as IVH Commandant Todd Jacobus. He also shared a bit of background on IVH and how Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is treated in the U.S. and added that Marshall County has received the Home Base Iowa designation for veterans.

“We would be very willing to learn and to be connected so that our staff in our hospital could learn the latest techniques and processes and procedures that have been developed and established by the state-leading center that you have in Marshalltown,” Sukhliak said through an interpreter.

He added that the city of Zdolbuniv recently won a grant from a Polish organization to establish a center dedicated to providing psychological and social assistance to veterans and their spouses.

“Here in Zdolbuniv, we specifically focus a lot on mental health of our veterans because a lot of them come back with missing limbs, and while the medical treatment is given to them through a lot of state channels, we also understand that we want them to come back and we want them to integrate back into the society,” Sukhliak said. “We want them to know that we are grateful to them for the sacrifice that they have done for our safety and our livelihood, and we want to make sure that they know they are needed in the society and welcome back into the society… Unfortunately, we don’t have anything as advanced as you have in terms of assistance with employment and giving an allowance for veterans to move to a certain location and put roots down there. So we’d really love to add that to our portfolio of assistance to our veterans, and we’re very eager to learn.”

Before the meeting wrapped up, Ramer pledged to send the Marshalltown delegation an article about Patterson’s visit to Ostroh in exchange for links to the T-R stories about Ukrainian families in Marshall County. They tentatively agreed to continue meeting quarterly and decided that with the eight-hour time difference, 8:30 a.m. Central Standard Time (4:30 p.m. in Zdolbuniv) made the most sense going forward.

“We appreciate your willingness to have a Ukrainian sister city, collaborate with a Ukrainian sister city. It means the world to us, especially considering everything that’s happening,” Ramer said. “Thank you for hosting Ukrainian families. I’m sure your hospitality also means the world to them.”

After they got off the conference call, Mitchell commented that the situation hit close to home for him because of his friend Gordy Siebring’s agricultural endeavors in Ukraine, and Greer noted the plight of Marshalltown native Burgess Barr, who was living in the city of Odesa with his Ukrainian wife before the war started.

Several Ukrainian foreign exchange students who came to Iowa, including one at West Marshall, were told they couldn’t come home, and Rep. Sue Cahill (D-Marshalltown) helped to get them scholarships at the University of Northern Iowa. According to Ladehoff, there is currently no path to permanent residence or citizenship for those displaced by the war, but he hopes that can be addressed in the future.

“The families that are here don’t want to go back. There’s nothing there. Everything that they had is gone, and they just want stability, you know, the kids going to school,” Ladehoff said. “And the kids love school here. The school kids here have been so accepting of them, and it took about a year, but it feels like they just kind of settled in.”

Marshalltown United for Ukraine and the social service agencies, he added, have worked together “like clockwork.”

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.