Saskatchewan man married in midst of Ukraine crisis
As protests turned deadly in Kyiv and Ukraine became embroiled in an international political crisis, one Saskatchewan man was just trying to get to his wedding. By the time he was set to fly home the Russian army had taken over the airport he was supposed to leave from in Crimea.
Al Brewer is finally back at work in Weyburn after a whirlwind wedding trip to Ukraine during the last three weeks of political chaos.
On the day he arrived in Kyiv Brewer went to the Canadian Embassy to pick up marriage papers, but it was closing so he went to his hotel instead. That day just happened to be Feb. 18, when protests in the center of the city turned deadly.
“We drove through several areas that were sandbagged, blocked off, and lots of protestors around,” he recalled, adding that he saw hundreds of protestors in camoflauge and black smoke billowing from some buildings.
Up until that point Brewer said he wasn’t too concerned about his safety, but when he woke up the next morning he learned what happened from a taxi driver after asking him to drive to the embassy in the center of the city.
“He said no deal. The area was closed off, blocked off solid, and the Canadian embassy was closed,” Brewer said. “We were actually in that exact area about three hours before this all happened—that the snipers were there and people got killed. It was a little (un)nerving really, to know that you were in that area just a short time before.”
Thankfully Brewer’s nerves didn’t have anything to do with his upcoming wedding. Brewer headed south by train to meet up with his fiancée Elena in her home city of Melitopol. She and her family live in the southeastern region of Ukraine, just three hours away from the Crimea peninsula by train.
As the wedding celebrations died down for the couple, the Russian troops were moving into Crimea.
“When the Russians came in people were not happy about it. They do not want to join Russia,” Brewer said.
He says the people he met in Ukraine, including his wife’s family, just want to have a fair government and freedoms like those Brewer enjoys as a Canadian. Brewer admitted the high level of corruption in Ukraine was apparent before the uprising; for example, when it came to processing paperwork he was told that “money talks.”
Brewer was originally supposed to fly out of an airport in Crimea to come home. That happened to be the first airport that the Russian troops took over. He didn’t feel comfortable with that, so he switched his flight.
“It made you feel a little uncomfortable because you never know from one minute to the next when things can escalate and violence can actually erupt,” he said. “The last thing I needed was to have my flight delayed and to get caught right in the middle of an airport while there’s a war going on.”
Brewer says his wife is still back in the Ukraine, but he talks to her several times a day over Skype. He is confident that she is safe where she is for now, far enough away from Crimea and from Kyiv. But he still hopes he can bring her to Canada sooner rather than later; they just have to wait to process the paperwork for immigration.