Black Ukrainian Lawmaker Reveals Plight of Overlooked Population

An Olympic gold medalist serving as Ukraine’s first Black member of parliament is urging fellow countrymen to resist the Russian invasion, highlighting the nation’s vulnerable but little-known African Ukrainian population.

{snip} Zhan Beleniuk has spoken openly about racism he’s faced in Ukraine after bringing home the Greco-Roman middleweight gold last year in the Tokyo games. {snip}

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{snip} A few thousand Black Ukrainians are believed to live in the country’s major cities, though precise population numbers aren’t available, Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon, a historian and University of Pennsylvania doctoral candidate who studies Black Ukrainians, told Axios.

• Some are biracial second- or third-generation Ukrainians with African fathers and white, Slavic mothers, while others are first-generation arrivals from African nations drawn by easy access to education.
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• Kyiv-born Beleniuk is the son of a Ukrainian mother and a Rwandan father {snip}
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• “I consider myself 100% Ukrainian, and the people who have always supported and believed in me are all in Ukraine,” Beleniuk said while competing in the Olympics. {snip}

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• Black Ukrainians, in the current conflict, could be singled out by Russia as suspicious or enemies just based on their skin color, St. Julian-Varnon said.

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