Ukrainian travel agent sent clients to Russia. Now, he is at a crossroads

24 years in the business. Now, pause

Khodorkovsky founded GoToRussia in 1998, amid a boom in US-Russia relations driven in part by a close relationship between Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin. By 2019, 30 employees across offices in Atlanta, San Francisco and Moscow helped Americans obtain visas to enter Russia and plan tours and excursions, among other services.

Now, all of this has pretty much stopped. Commercial flights connecting US and Russian destinations were suspended after the US banned Russian planes and airlines from its airspace, a move that prompted Russian authorities to quickly follow. But even if planes are still flying, Khodorkovsky says he can’t afford to continue facilitating travel — and tourism revenue — to a country that is wreaking so much havoc on its people. A series of aggressive emails from former customers and one-star reviews online, targeting his company’s relationship with Russia, suggest that there won’t be much demand for his company’s services anyway. Meanwhile, many of his employees based in Russia fled the country for fear of state repression.

In the days after the conflict broke out, Khodorkovsky removed a street sign above his front door with the company’s name on it and replaced it with a hand-painted Ukrainian flag.

At his desk, he began to devote almost all of his time to leading the campaign for donations to humanitarian aid.

Last Friday, boxes of donated items were stacked throughout his agency, with bilingual labels describing the contents of the various boxes.

Those funds are now on their way to Ukraine, which means Khodorkovsky will have a more open schedule going forward. However, he believes it is too early to think about what the crisis will mean for him and the future of his company, even as he acknowledges that Russia will likely be a “toxic place” long after the fighting has stopped.

“That’s probably the last thing on my mind right now, even though it’s been work that has fed me for 24 years,” he said. “It’s just with the news, with the bombings, we’re not thinking about business. I’m sure we’ll go back to normal at some point, and then we’ll think about how to make money. But there’s no time for that now… at the moment we just need To win the war.”

Donation campaign

In the wake of the outbreak of conflict, Khodorkovsky says that Ukrainian immigrants in metro Atlanta, including himself, have figured out ways to make themselves useful. He attended many rallies calling for peace and raised funds for relief efforts. There was also widespread interest in donating goods and supplies.

To make a large-scale donation drive possible, Khodorkovsky created a website, AtlantaforUkraine.com, where he posted a list of all needed items in the home, including hygiene products, candles, sleeping bags, blankets, medical supplies, backpacks, generators, worn clothes and more. The GoToRussia offices were one of eight collection sites located across the metro Atlanta area. In about two weeks, an estimated 20 tons of humanitarian aid were collected.

“The outpouring of support has been amazing,” Khodorkovsky said.

Khodorkovsky and other organizers of the donation campaign set up the logistics themselves for the supplies to Ukraine.

Over the weekend, donated merchandise made its way to Savannah Harbor via trucks. From there, Khodorkovsky says they will cross the Atlantic on a ship bound for Klaipeda, Lithuania, before being trucked to aid workers in Lviv, a Ukrainian city near the country’s western border with Poland.

Although Khodorkovsky does not rule out helping organize subsequent donation drives, no immediate plans are in place.

For years, Khodorkovsky says that when people in Atlanta asked where he is from, he would tell them he was Russian, “because few Americans know what Ukraine is or where it is.”

The Ukrainian people’s display of resistance and solidarity amid the ongoing Russian offensive helped them tap into a nationalist feeling they did not know existed.

“I never would have imagined that I would one day feel proud of being Ukrainian. It’s something I just discovered. And I’m sure it’s not just me. It’s something that seems to have been sitting inside of us and just woke up, this amazing national pride.” “So, this whole war, you helped us find our identity.”

To donate to relief efforts, visit https://www.ukrainianatlanta.org/donation.

Lautaro Grinspan is a report by a member of the American Corps covering immigrant communities in Metro Atlanta.