Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) has been collaborating with the Ukrainian Bar Association to help Ukrainians enforce sanctions, raise funds and gather evidence of war crimes.
“This is a war about national self-determination, international law, and the rule of law. Ukraine wants to integrate into Europe and join NATO. Europe wants that, too. Russia is saying it will not allow that to happen,” said Attorney Ed Lenci.
“We can’t stand idly by. JFK told us that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who preserve their neutrality in time of moral crisis.” He added that “if I were a couple of decades younger, I’d go over there and fight.”
Lenci, chair of NYSBA’s International Section, was approached in early December to form a chapter of the International Section in Ukraine and enter a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, with the Ukraine Bar Association.
NYSBA has entered memoranda of understanding with bar associations in many nations, and its International Section has more than 70 chapters around the world and according to Lenci.
“We established the chapter and entered the MOU within a few weeks, more quickly than usual,” Lenci said. The Ukraine Bar Association (UBA) president, Anna Ogrenchuk, was appointed chair of the new chapter and UBA’s Vice President, Ivan Horodyskyy, its vice-chair.
Forming teams to help Ukrainians
In early February, the International Section and the UBA formed a Ukraine Task Force and appointed New York lawyer Serhiy Hoshovsky and Lenci as co-chairs. The task force advised and supported Ukraine’s legal profession and the judiciary as the country aspired to greater integration with the nations of Europe and to join NATO.
“However,” Lenci explained, “we had scheduled a virtual meeting of the task force for February 24, at 8:30 a.m. EST, and as it happened, that was just hours after Russia invaded Ukraine.” As a result, Lenci explained that “we had to change the task force’s mission quickly.”
“It was amazing. One of our members in Poland, Anna Dąbrowska, provided us with a guide that one of her colleagues had just put together explaining how refugees could enter Poland.” Dąbrowska is a partner at Wardinski & Partners in Warsaw, co-chair of the International Section’s Poland chapter, and vice-chair for Europe of the International Bar Association.
Hoshovsky and Lenci “worked into the wee hours,” to form teams to help Ukrainian displaced by the invasion, sanctions, fundraising and the gathering of evidence of criminal acts.
“We looked outside the New York State Bar Association because this was an all-hands-on-deck emergency,” Lenci said. The task force includes members of the ABA International Section, the International Bar Association, the New York City Bar Association’s International Law Committee, the Ukrainian American Bar Association, the D.C. Bar, and the Global Security Institute.
On March 21, the UBA and the International Section issued a joint response to the Association of Lawyers of Russia, which had tried to justify Russia’s invasion. “We couldn’t allow the Association of Lawyers of Russia to propagate Russia’s excuses and phony narrative.”
Hotline for fleeing Ukrainians
Inna Liniova, executive director of the UBA, said she and her partner grabbed whatever she could think of, including their dog, and drove out against a seemingly endless column of packed-together cars.
“It took them 18 hours, instead of the usual nine, to make it to her small hometown of Storozhynets in western Ukraine, where her mother lived.
“In just a few days, they set up a hotline, giving information to Ukrainians who were fleeing the country but who didn’t know what their rights would be as refugees, or even exactly where to run to, or what to do about a dead body, a family member’s or a neighbor’s, lying before them, or how to document war crimes,” wrote New York Law Journal reporter Jason Grant.
“…The teams formed by the state bar’s task force included an immigration refugee group recruiting and training New York lawyers to help with what is expected to be an influx of Ukrainians seeking protected status in the U.S.”
President Biden said the U.S. would take 100,000 Ukrainian refugees.
“Lawyers have told callers to quickly get cellphone pictures of the crimes since the evidence may prove crucial later,” Grant wrote.
The New York bar also puts Ukrainian attorneys in touch with world-renowned lawyers. NYSBA is also working on ways Ukrainians can document property damage, especially as Putin blitzes civilians in homes, hospitals and schools.
NATO members are taking bold legal steps to address the crisis. For example, the U.S. granted Temporary Protected Status to Ukrainian nationals currently in the U.S.
Ukrainian refugees have the right to live and work in the European Union for up to three years. Poland, a NATO member with significant financial and military resources, welcomes Ukrainians with open arms, offering them employment, health care and education.
Temporary Protected Status
On March 25, more than 750 attorneys took part in a specialized training session on how to help Ukrainian refugees apply for Temporary Protected Status or TPS, Lenci says. As a result, Department of Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas extended TPS designation to Ukrainian refugees on March 3, according to NYSBA. NYSBA President T. Andrew Brown opened the event and reiterated the association’s strong stand against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Inna Liniova said to those in attendance that while three million people have left Ukraine for neighboring countries, thousands of Ukrainian men have returned from abroad to fight for their country. She asked that U.S. companies open their ranks to Ukrainians. Ivan Horodyskyy reminded members that Ukrainian refugees are not economic migrants, and many will return to their lives in Ukraine when it’s safe.
If you are interested in helping the Ukraine Task Force, please email Carra Forgea at cforgea@nysba.org.
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