Beaufort chef talks daily to mom in Ukraine. ‘You never know when the rockets will fly’
The website of South Carolina’s Inna Lanigan, a chef and food blogger, includes photos of recipes such as Ukranian-style potato cakes called “deruny” — and, conspicuously, a large apartment building destroyed by a Russian rocket.
Lanigan lives in Beaufort, but she was born and raised in Ukraine. And these days, since Russia invaded, she isn’t getting much sleep because she’s worried sick about her mother and sisters and other family members in her native country where bombs are toppling apartment buildings, hospitals and schools.
“It’s so difficult,” Lanigan says in tears.
Lanigan provides sobering testimony for U.S. residents living a world away from the war of the daily and deadly on-the-ground impacts. And in her online food platforms, she’s urging support for the country “to save lives,” hoping her personal connection will drive home the urgency. Ukrainianes, she says, are “being punished for their desire for freedom.”
“They need to win this as soon as possible,” says Lanigan. “The sooner it ends, the less people will be dead.”
Beaufort has taken a special interest in the war, spurred in part by Mayor Stephen Murray and the city’s effort to raise money for supplies for Ostroh, located 217 miles west of Kyiv, which the city has unofficially adopted. The Ukrainian community, Murray says, is providing housing for and feeding 1,100 refugees and preparing for the worst — a drawn-out invasion.
As of Monday, Murray said, Beaufort had raised $35,000 for Ostroh.
Seeking the truth
Lanigan isn’t the only Beaufort resident with strong connections to Ukraine who is closely watching the war.
Tatiana Tatum is a USCB art student from Russia whose art is available for sale at Thibault Gallery on Bay Street. She grew up visiting her grandmother in Odessa, Ukraine, which “didn’t feel like another country.” She, too, became emotional when speaking about the war, which she says has forced residents to keep bags packed to quickly flee to underground shelters when sirens sound.
“It’s unbearable,” Tatum said. “I assure you there’s no sane person in Russia who supports what’s going on there.”
While the Russian government can block social media and news media reports, Tatum said tech savvy young people are getting around the barriers. People who seek out the truth, she adds, are finding it.
“When one believes propaganda,” Tatum says, “one chooses to believe propaganda.”
Tatum laments the Russian government making it illegal to protest the war and putting people in jail who do and the destruction of schools and hospitals and people buried beneath them, leaving her friends “howling from grief.” Tatum regularly communicates through social media, giving glimpses of everyday life in Ukraine that she says has become “almost like living on another planet.”
‘It’s very unpredictable’
Lanigan, the Ukranian national, moved to the United States in 2009, when she was 25, and came to Beaufort in 2013. She became a citizen in 2015. She’s using her InnichkaChef and YouTube sites to ask for help for her native country, leading to the juxtaposition of photos featuring food and war.
“You never know when the rockets will fly,” Lanigan says. “It’s very unpredictable.”
She and her husband, David Lanigan, a construction company owner, live in the Pigeon Point neighborhood with their three children, 7-year-old Thomas, Johnny, 4, and 6-month-old Matrona. But each morning, Lanigan speaks with her mother to get the latest news on her family in Ukraine.
As of Monday, Lanigan says, her family was OK, but she noted that 136 “innocent children” are among the thousands who have been killed in the Russia-Ukraine war, adding, “It’s breaking my heart.”
Lanigan was born and raised in small town Ukraine about the size of Beaufort when it still was part of the Soviet Union. She jokes about a photograph of her taken when she was a young girl. It’s posted on her website.
“How do you like my “friend” in the background?” she says, referring to a photo of Vladimir Lenin, the Russian revolutionary and politician. “Also, note my lack of smile in typical Soviet fashion.”
Ukraine officially declared itself an independent country from Russia in 1991.
Lanigan paints a contrast between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s outspoken and plucky president. Putin, she says, has been “hiding,” Lanigan says, in reference to reports the Russian president is hiding at various locations since launching what he has called a “special military operation.” Meanwhile, she adds, Zelensky has been very visible, refusing to leave Kyev and “clearly showing what’s happening.”
She’s not surprised by the willingness of Ukranians to defend their country in the face of Russia’s superior military force, including women and young men.
But while the world is seeing wonderful images of the bravery of the Ukrainian people, Lanigan describes a small percentage who are “not so good.”
“They will pay price for that,” Lanigan says. “Definitely they will pay the price. Everyone will get what they deserve.”
On Monday, Lanigan wore a colorful embroidered dress called a vyshyvanka, Ukraine’s national outfit, when she joined others with connections to Ukraine or Russia in a discussion of the war at the University of South Carolina hosted by USCB and the city of Beaufort.
The panel included Tatum, Julie Siebold, who taught English to students in Ukraine, and Dr. Kevin Dopf, a USCB political science professor who taught at the U.S. Army Command & General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, a graduate school for the Army.
‘Your life is on the line’
Dopf called it a “tough subject,” especially for those with family in Ukraine. But it’s important, he says, to demonstrate differences between authoritarian and democratic governments. One difference he points out: Russian people don’t get accurate information like Americans receive —even in today’s polarized political environment, and if you do speak out against Putin you can end up dead, in prison or poisoned.
“Your life is on the line a little bit dealing with him,” he said.
But Dopf called the invasion a “massive miscalculation” by Putin and the Russian military.
But Western nations, who didn’t believe Russia would invade, miscalculated, too, he said. Now those countries, he noted, are facing “tremendous pressure” to do more to help Ukraine.
“You don’t put 150,000 troops on the border and bring in all kinds of support when you’re really not going to do anything or you just want a little bit,” Dopf said.
Western countries, Dopf added, showed “benign neglect” toward Russia after the Soviet Union and later its fragile democracy collapsed.
Russia has more nuclear weapons than the United States, but Dopf doesn’t think they would be used unless it was attacked. But Putin will attack civilians to win. “The Russian army culture,” Dopf says, “is to just annihilate you and wear down the people”
Ukraine needs support, Dopf says, but he adds that it’s a juggling act. “How much do you give and not provoke the Russian Bear so to speak.”
After high school, Lanigan earned a master’s in civil engineering and worked for a large commercial builder before relocating to the United States. But after living in her new home, she decided to pursue her interest in food and healthy eating.
What she misses most about Ukraine, she says, is seeing her family, the warm greetings of the people and, she laughs, the food.
She turns serious when discussing what she says Ukraine needs most: Western allies to impose a no-fly zone and airplanes to defend against Russian attacks that are “destroying cities.”
“Give us planes,” she says. “That’s what they need.”
This story was originally published March 30, 2022 at 4:55 AM with the headline "Beaufort chef talks daily to mom in Ukraine. ‘You never know when the rockets will fly’."
