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Testimonials from Students in Ukraine
I come from a small village near Borodianka in the Kyiv region. When the full-scale invasion began, I was 17 years old and in my first year of university. My village was occupied in the first days of the invasion. Buildings were destroyed. Many have already been rebuilt after the occupation ended. [See photos of bombed out building and its rebuild.] After a week and a half of occupation, we began to realize that the situation was becoming critical, and since there was one proven way out, my sister, several other relatives and I went to western Ukraine and then to Slovakia.
A week after we arrived abroad, all communication with my village was lost, and for almost a month I had no contact with my parents. At the same time, my sister and I had to resolve many issues with documents, as I was a minor and needed to establish guardianship. After a while, my university resumed online classes. It was very difficult to return to studying when you don't even have your own desk and your head is constantly filled with hundreds of questions about whether your family is alive, whether your native village has survived, whether you have anything left. Obviously, it's impossible to focus on new information in such conditions.
My most vivid memory of this period is a seminar during which I finally received a video call from my mom a few days after the de-occupation. My parents were able to drive to the nearest intact city to buy food and call us. I don't remember ever feeling such intense relief, and I hope I never have a reason to feel it again.
Thank you for your interest in Ukraine and your desire to help! It means a lot to all of us and reminds that not everyone in the world is indifferent.
Veronika
The full-scale invasion has been extremely difficult, both mentally and physically—especially during the first year and a half. It’s been incredibly painful to watch what’s happening to our own country: to read the news about casualties after every missile strike, to see all the destruction, and especially to hear the horrifying stories about what was happening in Mariupol.
Now, over 3 years after the full-scale invasion, we’ve somewhat adapted, but it remains challenging. There are countless hardships: from being unable to simply go to a concert or fly on vacation to living with air raids every two or three days, usually at night, when we wake up to explosions and have to hide in the hallway.
At the beginning of the invasion, my family’s country house was heavily damaged by shelling. Many of my university classmates volunteered to join the front lines, including one incredibly talented girl who I could only ever imagine speaking at a UN conference or receiving a Nobel Prize—yet she joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine simply because she felt she had to. I still can’t fully process that.
One of my mother’s brothers is currently serving in the military, and another recently died on the frontlines. We are still in shock. My aunt also suffered a stroke at the start of the invasion due to all the stress, but she’s okay now.
Studying under these conditions has been very difficult. When the full-scale invasion began, we still hadn’t fully recovered from the disruptions caused by COVID-19. Our studies have been fully online for the past four years, and many classmates fled abroad, so they simply don’t have the physical possibility to attend classes in person even if they wanted to. The hardest part was studying online during power outages, when Russia bombed our energy infrastructure and I had to stand on the cold balcony in winter, trying to catch a bit of mobile internet to join a seminar.
Despite everything, we have no other choice but to continue to fight, because the Russians won’t stop, and we must survive. I’m deeply grateful to the United States and other countries, and especially to their people, for helping Ukraine in so many ways.
Anonymous
Navigating the balance of continuing my life in times of war has been the most character-shaping experience that I have ever had. As a person who has always been striving for development and being better overall, I found it particularly challenging when I had nothing to do for the first weeks of the full-scale invasion. The classes at university stopped, my parents and I managed to flee Kyiv during the Russian offensive on the capital. My parents also stopped working for this period. I found myself in a little city, in the West of Ukraine, where I had never been before. I felt depressed - to say the very least - especially because I felt that I no longer had hope for the restoration of my previous life.
I did not have any relatives abroad who would be able to take my parents and me with them. My cousin’s mother was pretty much the only one who fled abroad in the first days. That left us three in a house in the Kyiv region in the first days of the war. I understood that we were all alone and nobody will help us. I remember that my only salvation from depression at that time was that a Ukrainian blogger, in view of the invasion, released in the public domain, free of charge, and investments.
I had started to study French with a teacher while being in the West. I was so eager to learn, that I searched for similar opportunities. Then one of our professors at the time sent us a huge table with foreign universities that were ready to accept us for the exchange period. I emailed over 60 of them, then, on one day, I received a response from one of the most prestigious French universities - SciencesPo Paris [also known as the Paris Institute of Political Sciences], and left the next day. At the time, I was so scared and frustrated with the war in my country, that I did not consider how difficult it could be, considering that I had never been to France before, never lived alone before and barely spoke two freshly-learned words of French.
My parents drove me to Warsaw; I took a flight; got lost on my way to Dijon because I missed my connection at another train station; ran out of mobile Internet; and, was not met by anyone in Dijon, because I couldn’t message anybody. I somehow took directions to the campus from somebody on the street and arrived there with all my luggage, because I didn’t know where to go otherwise. Then, luckily, administration members and local students welcomed me. I moved to my student hosts’ apartment.
I remember going to the local theatre play with other SciencesPo students the same evening - and then crashing and crying in my room – alone and silently. I didn’t want anyone to think that I was ungrateful. I cried because my mind was shocked to see people laughing and enjoying life while something horrible was happening in my country.
To summarize the following three years, I had to learn the ropes quite quickly and become independent and mature. All of that was mixed with the willingness to still grasp my youth and youthful happiness - but, at the end of the day, it was all just an illusion, as we were inherently different from other students. We did not have the privilege to enjoy life - we had to work endlessly and think of the future, a lot of people started working, oftentimes in unqualified jobs, as they were no longer receiving any help from their families.
Still, somehow Ukrainians managed to master the local language and excel in their studies - I remember being shocked by how many Ukrainians I saw at the B2 French level examination center after only staying in France and learning French for one year - and these people learned at the same time as me.
Even three years since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, I feel inherently different. I would not say that I am necessarily “traumatized,” but I do often feel difficulties in connecting with other people. It goes from the very basic everyday situations (when other students are complaining about the longest time in transport they spent to go to Thailand on a holiday, I just stay silent and say nothing about my 40-hour buses to go home, as the sky is closed) to building actual profound connections. Nevertheless, I am happy to say that, three years in, I managed to get back on track - I work in a Ukrainian-British law firm remotely, I study remotely in Ukraine and abroad, I am also studying two more foreign languages after French and I am learning and getting better every single day.
The journey to make France feel like home took me three years. I went from absolutely hating it here and even being ashamed of saying that I live in France, to actually building a life here and being able to call this place home. Now I know that I want to go back to Ukraine at the first available opportunity, but I also cannot envision my life without an international aspect in my job or career, suggesting travelling frequently or working with foreign entities.
Anonymous