Public Project
Ukrainian Enclave in Brazil Offers Warm Welcome to War Refugees
Tropical ‘Little Ukraine’ is populated by descendants of Ukrainian immigrants who arrived decades ago and still maintain the old language and customs
By Samantha Pearson and Luciana Magalhaes | Photographs by Maria Magdalena Arréllaga for The Wall Street Journal
"Ever since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, this sleepy farming town some 7,000 miles away in southern Brazil has been gripped by a sense of both horror and nervous excitement. Nicknamed “Little Ukraine,” Prudentópolis prides itself on being one of the most Ukrainian towns in Latin America, perhaps even more Ukrainian than Ukraine itself, locals joke.
Among soybean farms rise onion-domed wooden churches, where congregations in traditional embroidered shirts pray in a form of Ukrainian that resembles the dialect spoken by their ancestors, immigrants who arrived in Brazil as long ago as the 1890s. But things are about to change: The refugees are coming.” (…)
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