For the last five months, a pair of recent college graduates have been hard at work creating “Ukraine Unlocked,” a weekly newsletter that they hope gives Americans a broader understanding of the country.
“We really thought there was a disconnect between Americans and Ukraine,” said Gabriel Pimsler, one of the founders of the newsletter and a 2015 St. Louis Park High School graduate who spent roughly seven months in Ukraine in 2019 as a Fulbright English Teaching assistant at the Donbas National Academy of Civil Engineering and Architecture in Kramatorsk. He’s now a government relations official in Washington DC.
The experiences pushed Pimsler and fellow student Philip Kopatz in November 2021 to create a resource to bridge that knowledge gap and stay connected with the country they became immersed in during their stint abroad. And while not initially intended to be a deep dive into the Russia-Ukraine conflict, it has certainly become that over the last several weeks as the situation has escalated.
“With everything that’s been going on, people have found the newsletter to be really useful and that’s what we’re most proud of,” Pimsler said.
The newsletters consist of top headlines from the week to keep people updated along with analyses’ done by Pimsler and Kopatz. Beyond dissecting the conflict with Russia, they’ve also done work to highlight contemporary Ukrainian culture, featuring Ukrainian films that will soon be on Apple TV or Netflix and highlighting Ukrainian artists that are touring around Europe.
“That’s really, for me, the most enjoyable part,” said Pimsler, whose parents are both local artists. “Just having that historical and familial connection to the arts and culture and then being able to translate that into my passion for Ukraine has been really enjoyable.”