The new students at St. George Academy in Manhattan’s Little Ukraine neighborhood say they are relieved to be attending classes where they can speak their native language and relate to peers — but adjusting to life in New York City has not been easy.

“I saw the looks on these kids’ faces as we did tours of the school,” said St. George Academy principal Andrew Stasiw. “And we would walk by classrooms and they see people who sound like them and speak Ukrainian … there was a sense of comfort and relief.”

But there’s a new and different life off of St. George’s campus that lacks the schools’ reminders of home. 

Gone is the pageantry of hearing people in the U.S. sing their national anthem and parade in solidarity as their country was bombed by Russia. Now they are navigating life in a city that feels unfamiliar.

As St. George Academy bought new lockers and textbooks for the Ukrainian students — many of whom are attending on full scholarships — the refugees have returned home to living situations that aren’t ideal: Some are without their parents who had to stay back and fight; others are living in shelters or in small, maxed out apartments.

And Stasiw has new worries — money. Now that enrollment has grown from 80 students to 140 — currently including 33 refugee students — he’s unsure how he can support them.

“When the war first broke out, our efforts here were to raise money for Ukraine,” Stasiw said. “Now we need to raise money for our Ukrainian students that are here.”

Welcoming dozens of new students put pressure on the small staff and building — so Stasiw got to work reshaping its landscape.

“I had to hire additional teachers. I had to get additional lockers. I had to buy a lot more textbooks,” Stasiw said. 

Meanwhile, the newcomers’ lives in New York City are far from what they expected.

They know New York City from the movies, Stasiw said, “where it’s so beautiful and they just see Central Park, [the students] comment on how amazed they are by all the rats and violence … They suddenly don’t feel like they’re safe.”

One student currently lives in a homeless shelter with her mother, who often doesn’t have money for food and frequents the school’s small cafeteria for lunch. 

Another student has been falling asleep in class most days. She’s sharing a small room with several people and an infant who keeps her up at night.

The new lockers St. George Academy scraped limited funds to buy are full of students’ belongings and several days worth of clothes because there is no storage space in their current dwellings.

Even though resources are stretched, Stasiw said he can’t turn away the Ukrainian students who have seen things that would be unimaginable to their peers. 

One student, Stasiw said, “saw her city destroyed by missiles. She’s in shock.”

That student is now living in a homeless shelter that initially enrolled her in a public school. “She goes there … and she doesn’t speak any English … and she gets bullied by three girls,” Stasiw said.

Her mother came pleading to Stasiw to let her into St. George Academy, a high school, even though she’s only in eighth grade. 

“We were able to offer her a uniform but she couldn’t afford shoes. So I gave her $100 right before Christmas,” Stasiw explained. But when she came back from their winter break, she returned the money to him. “She says, ‘some people we met gave us a free pair. They fit fine. Here’s the $100 back.’ ”

One Ukrainian parent asked if their daughter could live in the principal’s one bedroom apartment, because Stasiw lives nearby the school.

“They’re struggling,” Stasiw said about his new students, “but they’re not looking for a free ride.”

Even with the school expanding and changing, Stasiw remains focused on the challenging college-prep curriculum. Their 12th-grade classes have always been the smallest, he said, because “not everyone makes it to the finish line.”

“We’re not an easy school … We offer a lot of electives that they have to take. They’re going to take four years of computer coding. They’re going to take four years of music, they’re going to take astronomy, philosophy, psychology, sociology … Freshmen take two languages their first year … We’re still driving the curriculum.”

Behind the doors of the Academy are reminders of home … Not only is Ukrainian widely spoken but yellow and blue flags adorn most classrooms. For lunch, Stasiw will often treat his students to meals catered by neighborhood Ukrainian delis.

But once the school day is over, the students are back out in the city they find so unfamiliar — and much different from the quiet countryside many came from in Ukraine. 

“I feel like New York is just scarier. There’s a lot of stuff going on in New York every day,” said ninth-grader Olha Stanko, whose mother doesn’t let her hang out with friends as late as she once did in Ukraine. 

“It’s not as wonderful as I thought it was going to be, I thought it was going to be all high beautiful buildings and lots of parks,” said ninth-grader Nazariy Lanyk.

In addition to the culture shock, Stanko said she spends more time than the average teenager worrying about her father who can’t leave Ukraine because he’s under 65. 

“I have my dad in Ukraine, which is pretty hard for me because I haven’t seen him in a really long time,” she said. “That’s the thing that’s hardest for me the most. ����������Ա�’s my home and I want to go back there. That’s one thing a normal teenager doesn’t have to go through.”

Stanko was able to find comfort in reuniting with her best friend — Nicole Kozmey, who is now a 10th-grader at St. George Academy — a world away from the war in their home country.

They’re not sure where they’ll be in the next few years — if they’ll graduate from St. George Academy or return home to Ukraine. But for now St. George Academy is hoping to keep being the place where they can focus on their education in the comfort of a Ukrainian community. 

“Research will tell you that if students are afraid, not comfortable, they won’t learn,” Stasiw said. “So … that sense of warmth that they get from our teachers and from everybody in our small environment … I think that’s made all the difference in the world.”

But, a year after Russia invaded its neighbor, upending the lives of millions, the Puzhalina family has stabilized: Anastasiia and her husband were elated to find an affordable rental and were relieved to receive their work authorizations in January. 

Central to their happiness, their children, ages 11, 10 and 7, are thriving: They felt welcomed by their new school and have made many friends. All have a penchant for mathematics and the eldest is no longer classified as an English language learner.  

“They are doing well at school and making really good progress in English,” Puzhalina said. “Virsaviia, my youngest, reads in English better than in Ukrainian already.”

And there was another development that will make life in America much easier for the family.

“I am learning to drive,” Puzhalina said. “It was hard for me to overcome my fear: It was something that paralyzed me. But now I feel more comfortable. I just have to practice backing up, parallel parking and get that license.”

The family’s progress comes amid ongoing tumult in their home country. The invasion has left , according to U.S. estimates. Some 5.9 million people are meaning they are running for safety inside its borders, and millions more have fled to neighboring countries and across Europe. 

There is no foreseeable end to the conflict. President Joe Feb. 20 came just a day before announced his plan to withdraw from the last major remaining nuclear arms control treaty with the United States. This latest move, , is among many policy changes that have left some Russians uneasy: Putin’s effort has prompted thousands here.

Other Ukrainians, including Puzhalina’s parents, remain under siege. Puzhalina would love for them to join her family in Washington, but at 57 years old, her father is not permitted to leave the country. 

Yana Annette Lysenko, working toward a Ph.D. in comparative literature and Slavic studies at New York University, is well aware of the war-time restrictions. 

Lysenko, whose boyfriend lives in Ukraine and also cannot leave, visited the city of Odesa from mid-August until the end of November 2022. Reuniting with family and friends, she worked on her dissertation and volunteered. She plans to head back for a week in April and again in May, perhaps for a month. 

“The last few weeks were probably the toughest,” she said. “That’s when the citywide electric outages started. Other than that, it’s surprising how in some ways things felt so normal, in others completely unlike anything before.”

Lysenko was moved by the solidarity of the Ukrainian people, and how they could find joy in the darkest of times. 

“There’s a lot of concern about this potential spring offensive, but more than anything Ukrainians aren’t losing faith,” she said. “They trust their armed forces and believe in victory. I think most people understand this war will continue for a long time so there’s a certain despair in that regard, but there’s a refusal to give up. There is an amazing sense of community no matter how hard things get: Almost every evening there were musicians singing on the streets of the city center and people would join in and dance and sing.”

But there is one fear she can’t shake, that her boyfriend will be called to serve. 

“That is a very real worry for me,” she said. “Every day they are mobilizing men, and one of the scariest things for me while I was there — even more so now — was seeing all of the soldiers walking around and going to people’s houses to give them military summonses. I’m terrified my boyfriend will encounter this soon.”

Marta Hulievska, a sophomore at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, has worried about her family ever since war broke out midway through her freshman year. 

Hulievska, a history and English major, saw her mother, Hanna, for the first time since she left for college when the two reunited in Berlin in December. They spent four days traversing the city and exchanging gifts: Her mother brought Hulievska’s favorite loose leaf tea, Ukrainian chocolates and a hair dye she couldn’t find in the States. The sophomore sent her mother home with candies, a backpack for one of her sisters and a stuffed animal for the other. 

“She was crying when she left,” Hulievska said of her mother. 

Her family’s life is not easy. Her father and one of her sisters are staying in Zaporizhzhia, minding the family home while her mother and another sister are across the country in Lviv. Separated by a 24-hour train ride, the family does their best to endure. 

Hulievska, who battles anxiety and depression, is often triggered by news from home. It’s hard for her to plan: She’ll occasionally miss class when she feels overwhelmed. 

“Recently, the anniversary brought back a lot of memories,” she said. “We thought this was going to end a lot sooner.  A couple of days ago, I saw a video of Mariupol two days before the invasion with people singing the national anthem. I was emotionally numb for the rest of the day. I have a lot of problems organizing and scheduling.”

Hulievska, who studied the Holocaust in Berlin, came to a disturbing realization while abroad, that the Russian invasion will one day be memorialized in a similar way. 

“I guess in 50 years, they are going to be talking about the Ukraine-Russian war, creating museums for the victims, commemorating what happened,” she said. “I’m going to be a part of history. But not necessarily the part of history I want to be a part of.” 

Despite their heartache about conflict at home, she and the others persevere. 

Puzhalina’s husband, Oleh, will soon become a maintenance technician, pending last-minute paperwork. But his wife has not yet found a job.  

“It is not easy to find something that will allow me to stay on the school schedule with my kids in the morning at least,” Puzhalina said. “But I’m not discouraged.”

Through all of the resettlement tumult, her children have latched on to their studies. At least two had a unique advantage: Illia, age 11, studied English in Ukraine, making his coursework easier to understand. Her youngest, Virsaviia, 7, became close friends with their landlord’s granddaughter, a native English speaker, so she had a partner with whom to practice upon arrival. 

Middle child, Yeva, 10, is taking a little longer to learn the language. 

“Her ELL teachers said she is doing really well, but her English is more academic,” her mother said. “What she needs is more like social English.” 

Illia, now a sixth grader, loves basketball, volleyball and his English literature class. Yeva, a fifth grader, adores mathematics, particularly fractions. 

Both children miss their family and friends in Ukraine. 

“We call them in the morning,” Yeva said of her maternal grandparents. “I want them to come here.”

Virsaviia, who is in the second grade, has adjusted well: She cherishes her teacher. “She’s so nice,” the little girl said. “She’s very kind.”

Despite all they’ve gained here, Puzhalina doesn’t know if her family will stay in America. 

“I am trying not to hope for anything — like living in the States forever,” she said. “The world is unpredictable. We have, at the moment, the right to legally stay here through October 2023 and then I don’t know.”

Svitlana Popova’s students didn’t realize she was leading their online math class while outside the charred remains of her home in Ukraine until they saw a news video .

Her students were in their own difficult circumstances, too – seeking refuge away from their homes, some in other countries.

Popova is a mathematics teacher in the town of Borodyanka, in the Kyiv region of Ukraine. Her school was seized as a headquarters by Russian military forces and heavily damaged before their retreat. After her classroom transitioned to online instruction, Russian tanks fired on her house and burned it down. Yet this dedicated teacher continued to lead virtual lessons from a small umbrella-covered table in the yard.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

Ordinary Ukrainians have been hailed for their heroism since Russia’s full-scale invasion. “There are no small matters in a great war,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy affirmed in an emotional . “Each of us is a fighter,” Zelenskyy stated. “Each of us is the basis of defense.”

Listing the tools of war — ship’s helms, steering wheels, weapons, scalpels — Zelenskyy ended with an unexpected inclusion: the teacher’s pointer. This passing remark highlights an often hidden front in ����������Ա�’s defensive struggle — the fight by countless teachers and parents to keep more than educated, even as their worlds have been thrown into upheaval.

Educational efforts

Like ����������Ա�’s stunning resistance itself, local educators are rising to the occasion despite enormous challenges. Viral videos show teachers continuing to instruct their small pupils in during active bombardments, or conducting lessons inside a after schools lose electricity. Gas stations and grocery stores, powered by generators long after homes and schools lose power, are being into hubs for filming virtual lessons.

One Kyiv teacher spent hours outside a store, determined to finish sharing the day’s homework assignment despite rolling blackouts. Other teachers now bring their for online lessons, lifting spirits and providing psychological support. Many teachers, like Popova, comfort their students despite their own traumatic losses.

Long-term displacement

As an since 2015, I have long observed the effects of armed conflict on Ukrainian children. After Russia first in 2014, regular to schools have been attributed by Ukrainians to Russian governmental efforts to sow fear.

Between that first invasion and the second in February 2022, armed conflict with Russia internally displaced Ukrainians and damaged . I have analyzed the impact of this on children for since Russia’s invasion began nine years ago. Still, these earlier challenges pale in comparison with what the Ukrainian educational system faces today.

Russia’s nationwide offensive against Ukraine in early 2022 led to the largest refugee flows in Europe since World War II. In the weeks following the invasion, nearly 16 million Ukrainians were driven from their homes to seek refuge and . Many of these were women and children, exacting a heavy toll on ����������Ա�’s female-majority teaching corps, as well as their students.

With large numbers of ����������Ա�’s young people at least temporarily resettled in primarily European countries, some teachers a surge in their students’ motivation linked to the structure of returning to their online Ukrainian schooling. “The children missed it (school) … because most of them were on the road for a long time. It was very emotionally draining, and when they returned to school, it was something they were used to,” one teacher .

Teaching online, again

Teachers around the world developed remote-teaching skills during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now that war had driven their classes apart again, Ukrainian teachers adapted those skills to teach students across Europe and the world.

Some private online schools like made their materials available free of charge. This step allowed Ukrainian students to study at home if they could not otherwise access schooling because of the war. It also provided a way for Ukrainian refugee children to retain access to school materials in their native language. Still, new obstacles emerged.

Many countries that took in Ukrainian refugees required the children to attend local schools, even if they didn’t speak the local language. Some children thrived, like the young Ukrainians who their Welsh hosts by learning the local language in less than 12 weeks. Yet for many children, these host country efforts at integration created new problems. In my ongoing ethnographic research, Ukrainian parents described how these attendance requirements left their children frustrated. “The children just sit there not understanding anything all day,” one parent told me.

Parents told me that after their children finished these long days in a foreign school, many would begin their day’s real learning late at night. Parents said Ukrainian language materials gave children the chance to stay on schedule with their grade level back home. Failure to do so might further derail their future state exams and graduation dates.

By nightfall, however, children had lost their most productive educational hours. Harmful spirals soon followed. Even formerly top students experienced exhaustion-driven pressures to copy virtual assignments. Losing their joy of learning added to the strain of the war’s intense in these young lives.

A focus on education

����������Ա�’s literacy rate is 99.8%, one of the , and education is a national point of . In wartime, ����������Ա�’s government is working to adapt its educational system to new realities.

Home schooling is permitted, so long as students can pass standardized tests. Still, many supervising parents are overburdened with the tasks of daily survival in the face of the Russian military’s relentless on the civilian population. One mother to a reporter that she soothes her children to sleep in bomb shelters before arranging shovels around them in case they become trapped in the rubble of a missile attack. Another mother told me she sends her young child to school with an emergency backpack filled with food, water and clothes in case he becomes trapped with his teachers.

The Russian military has also damaged or destroyed over , adding to construction burdens. When the school year in September, government data indicated that of Ukrainian schools nationwide were able to offer full-time, in-person instruction. Even those that were intact are now required to have a bomb shelter before they can hold in-person lessons. Major have rushed to build bomb shelters for schools, but, even so, many are simple, dirt-floor basements.

In addition, Russia’s intentional targeting of ����������Ա�’s electrical grid and civilian infrastructure poses new dangers to children’s health and schooling. Power outages have affected an estimated 10 million people, over one-quarter of the Ukrainian population. of ����������Ա�’s pupils are enrolled online and need electricity to attend classes and do schoolwork. Continued electrical outages would be a foreboding new hurdle.

Under occupation

The status of children’s education in Russian-controlled territories is even more alarming. Russia’s occupation has ushered in new forms of ideological in the classroom. Teachers in the liberated Kharkiv region have spoken of by the Russian military when they refused to teach their students that Ukraine was a territory of Russia.

Ukrainian teachers have also tried to their students from Russia’s forcible deportations of minors, a crime of under international law.

Courage has become synonymous with global descriptions of Ukrainian citizens enduring war, and teachers exemplify this everyday heroism. Still, Russia’s targeting of ����������Ա�’s youngest citizens unfortunately goes much deeper than the physical devastation of their , and . In a survey of existing educational challenges, one brave parent admitted, “I am really scared for the future of our children.”

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

The second grader, who lives with her mother, father and two older siblings in Tacoma, Washington, was excited to return to class, though she was worried about having a new teacher. 

“Back home,” in Ukraine, her mother, Anastasiia explained, “elementary students have the same teacher from first through fourth grade.”

But Virsaviia’s fears melted after just a few hours.

“I like my new teacher,” said the little girl, sitting in the family car as her father drove her and her sister to Elmhurst Elementary on the second day of school last week. “I liked my class and my new friends.” 

Virsaviia’s brother, Illia, 11, felt the same: The sixth grader, who moved up to middle school this year, was thrilled to have Ukrainian- and Russian-speaking students in his English language classes. And middle sister Yeva, 9, was elated to have the same 5th-grade teacher this year as her big brother did for the few months the siblings were in school last year. Not only did Illia speak highly of her, Yeva got to meet her during a spring parent-teacher conference. 

“She was excited to see her (again),” her mother said. 

But underneath the joy that accompanies the start of the new school year is a painful uncertainty about the future. Virsaviia’s parents worry daily about their immigration status, their ability to work and about the family they left behind. 

They and others with strong ties to Ukraine wonder when and how the invasion, now in its seventh month, will end. 

The 74 has been keeping pace with expats since last winter and with Virsaviia’s family since meeting them at a refugee camp in Tijuana, Mexico in April: They were among more than who fled the country since the invasion began Feb. 24. 

Another 7 million Ukrainians are internally displaced and are living in areas prone to conflict, unable to leave because of security risks, battered infrastructure and a lack of money and information about how and where to head for safety, according to the United Nations.  

More than had been killed by early August and more than 7,400 others have been injured, the UN reported. 

The Zaporizhzhia power plant, located inside a city that has become , is currently being monitored by while ����������Ա�’s armed forces, bolstered by volunteers, held by the Russian military. 

Marta Hulievska, a rising sophomore at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, has been worried about the power plant ever since war began: It’s located in her hometown. 

The history major is anxious about her parents’ recent decision to reunite there after months spent apart. Married for 21 years, they were eager to live together again.  

“Sirens go off every hour,” she told The 74 earlier this summer. “My dad ignores them: If you would go to the bomb shelter every time the alarms go off, you would not be able to function.”

Hulievska, who spent her summer in New York City working as an intern at a human-rights focused organization founded by Eleanor Roosevelt and Wendell Willkie, worries whether her father, a 57-year-old attorney, will be called up to war. 

“So far, he has not gotten any documentation about it,” his daughter said, speaking of the draft. “But it happens kind of randomly. It’s always in the back of our minds.”

And her parents’ financial situation is dire. The Ukrainian by the end of the year. Hulievska has been sending them money for several months. 

She isn’t sure when she will see them again, though she does plan to participate in a three-week study abroad program in Berlin in December. Hulievska hopes her mother and sisters, who are free to travel outside Ukraine, will join her. If they make the trip, it will be their first visit since she left for college. 

Wartime restrictions mean her father will not attend. Men in his age group are prohibited from leaving the country. And no one knows when — or how — the invasion will conclude. 

Her parents remain divided on the topic.  

“My mom feels it will end soon, which helps her to not panic,” Hulievska said. “But my dad is pessimistic. Whenever I talk to him about coming back to Ukraine, he thinks I might not be able (to).”

Yana Lysenko, a graduate student at New York University, wasn’t willing to wait any longer. Her boyfriend lives in Odesa, which is partly why she headed back to the country in late August. She was so worried about alerting her parents to her plan that she told them only after she bought her plane ticket. It took two days to enter the beleaguered country. 

“It was an exhausting trip,” she said in an Aug. 26 email from Ukraine. “I flew to Warsaw and then Moldova Saturday-Sunday, rested in Moldova overnight and then crossed the border via bus to Odesa on Monday night. Things are much calmer here currently than I expected. I’ve heard a few sirens over the past few days, but no attacks from what I know on the city itself.” 

Lysenko, working toward a Ph.D. in comparative literature and Slavic studies, longs to volunteer. 

“I’ve done a bit of inquiring and there are a lot of different opportunities, although I’m really leaning toward those that help prepare meals for people in need within the city, as well as those that help the elderly,” she wrote. “People are really struggling. Prices are very high for food and basic necessities right now, so I’d like to help the most vulnerable groups in that way.”

But vulnerability isn’t confined to those who remain in-country. Anastasiia Puzhalina and her family, who’ve been living in Tacoma for the past four months, have relied on the goodness of strangers as they navigate life in the United States. 

They currently live rent-free with an elderly man whom they met through their church. A recent widower who lost his wife to COVID, he enjoys their company. 

“He is an amazing man,” Puzhalina said. “His grandkids are almost the same age as our children, so this is such a great blessing for our family.”

He pledged to help them until they can live on their own but it’s a difficult position: Puzhalina’s husband worked for years at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and she sold clothing online. They’ve always supported themselves. 

They’ve applied for Temporary Protected Status and employment authorization but neither has come through yet. Right now, they’re surviving on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANIF. 

The uncertainty makes it difficult to plan for the future: Puzhalina has no idea where they might be in a year.

“It depends on what status we will have,” she told The74. “I am praying for the end of war, but I can’t see the end yet. If the war does end, I think our Temporary Protected Status won’t be extended and we will have to leave. I don’t think we have any path to legalization. I think we will use this time as much as possible to help our family in Ukraine.”

Puzhalina’s parents still live in Chernihiv. Her father is not allowed to flee and her mother wouldn’t go without him.

Their daughter’s concern extends well beyond their physical safety. 

“It’s not just about the danger of being hit by a missile, but about inflation, the lack of work, the price for groceries, of fuel, for everything,” she said. “It is a really bad situation in Ukraine.”

Despite these fears, the family’s stay in America has been marked by many bright spots — particularly for the children, who spent the summer swimming in a backyard pool, visiting a local rock-climbing center and camping. 

Illia, who months earlier in Tijuana expressed worry about making new friends in America, has since forged a strong bond with a boy at school. The relationship has greatly improved his ability to speak English. 

And the children aren’t the only students in the family. Their mother has spent the past few months learning to drive. 

She’s already passed her written exam and will soon sign up for the road test. 

“It’s very challenging,” she said, “I never had to do it in Ukraine: We lived in a 100% walkable place. The big test, I’ll take it when I will feel more confident. I had never been behind the wheel before.”

It’s not how most Black History Month workshops begin. 

“I’m streaming live from a hotel bathroom,” said Atnre Alleyne, co-founder and CEO of TeenSHARP, a college access program. 

Alleyne was speaking in February via Zoom to dozens of high school students in Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Delaware. But his hotel bathroom was in western Ukraine, where, after awakening late that month to the sound of Russian bombs exploding, he and his family fled from their home in a Kyiv suburb. 

With Alleyne’s wife and co-founder, Tatiana Poladko, her 81-year-old father, and their three young children on the other side of the bathroom door, Alleyne loaded a virtual background — a 1968 of high school students on their way to a memorial service for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — and kicked off the workshop. 

“Injustice anywhere, as Dr. King said, is a threat to justice everywhere,” Alleyne told the students as he drew parallels between the fight against racial tyranny in the United States and political tyranny in Ukraine. “It is really important to be globally aware, globally conscious, and also to think of ways that you can stand up for what’s right.”

The couple’s commitment to their work and their students has been tested in recent years, first through the pandemic, when they transitioned to a virtual program, and then in January 2021, when they moved from Delaware to Poladko’s native Ukraine. The war and the family’s displacement further complicated matters.

But Alleyne, 37, and Poladko, 38, are steadfast. TeenSHARP, they say, is more than just a college access program serving low-income, Black, and Latino students; it is a leadership program. Their goals are more than just getting students accepted to, enrolled in and graduated from college; they are trying to close the gap that, on average, has left Black households with of the wealth of white households.

“I was an excellent student, a 4.0 student, but my parents never sugarcoated it. In this country, with the level of corruption that existed, that didn’t mean a whole lot,” Poladko said of Ukraine. “What I always tell students is that … someone sold you a lie in America that this is not also the case for you as a student of color. Your chances of success are as fleeting as mine were, and they are as dependent on luck as mine were. So what I always tell them is that at TeenSHARP, we are trying to diminish the percent of luck, and we do so by following the blueprint that affluent families have been following for years.”

Replicating that blueprint with fewer resources was already an uphill battle, requiring intensive work from families and the TeenSHARP staff, particularly Poladko, who serves as the college counselor. Living seven time zones and more than 4,000 miles away heightened the degree of difficulty. 

Earlier this year, before Russia invaded Ukraine, Poladko would start one-on-one meetings with early-rising high school seniors at 5:30 a.m. ET, or 12:30 p.m. in Ukraine. After four hours of consulting on waitlists and competing financial aid packages, including calls that Poladko often took while waiting outside her children’s ballet class or piano lesson, she would continue from 2:30 p.m. ET (9:30 p.m. in Ukraine) to around 8 p.m. ET (3 a.m. in Ukraine). 

“They realize that we’re going to go fricking hard for you, and you’re going to go fricking hard for yourself,” she said. “We have to show you how privileged America works — and you don’t know it.”

A flight to safety

The couple’s dedication is such that Russian bombs caused only a momentary pause in TeenSHARP’s programming. After the explosions woke the family on Feb. 24, Alleyne and Poladko, who don’t own a car, began searching for ways out. On Feb. 25, they celebrated their daughter’s Zoryana’s 7th birthday. The next day, they crammed eight people into an acquaintance’s Volkswagen Passat. The family only brought sandwiches and their clothes. After a 2.5-hour drive west, they reached the city of Zhytomyr, where Alleyne hosted the Black History Month workshop. 

“I couldn’t go to sleep [afterward], I was restless,” said Asquith Clarke II, a TeenSHARP alum who logged onto the workshop from Oberlin College in Ohio. “At first I thought to myself, ‘This is crazy, I’m not sure what I can do to support them, I have college things going on.’ But knowing how much Ms. Tatiana and Mr. Atnre have done for me, am I just going to sit here and go to sleep knowing that they’re in danger?” 

For the first time, Clarke wrote to his elected representatives, encouraging them to help Ukraine defend itself. The rising junior posted their replies to Instagram and encouraged his followers to act, too. 

Meanwhile, Alleyne, Poladko, their kids — 7-year-old Zoryana, 4-year-old Nazar and 2-year-old Taras — and her elderly father took a train, another train and a car driven by volunteers to get closer to the Polish border. They reached it after a 5-mile walk, Poladko ushering the children and Alleyne assisting her dad, already weakened from a long case of COVID. 

A series of temporary accommodations, some requiring the family to sleep side-by-side, heads next to toes, led them to Warsaw. 

By March, Alleyne and Poladko were able to enroll their children in day care and elementary school and rent a two-bedroom apartment in Warsaw that overlooks a tree-filled public park. Poladko’s father sleeps in one bedroom, and the couple and their children share three mattresses in the other. The family’s furniture is still in their rental house outside Kyiv, so decorations are limited to artwork the kids bring home from school. “You Are My Sunshine,” says a handmade painting in the living room.

To work, Alleyne perches his laptop on a bookshelf next to a Paw Patrol puzzle and calls it a standing desk. Poladko turned the dining room table into her workspace. When they have calls at the same time, Alleyne often retreats to the bathroom — just as he did in the hotel in western Ukraine. 

And when the couple’s Ukrainian nanny joined them in Warsaw, they developed a routine where she fell asleep in their bedroom while Alleyne and Poladko worked. In the early morning hours, after the couple finished up, they would switch spots, with the nanny sleeping on a tan couch in their otherwise barren living room. 

Ukraine meets Ghana in New Jersey

Alleyne and Poladko have been finding a way forward since 2005, when they met at the Camden campus of Rutgers University, in New Jersey while they each pursued master’s degrees. Poladko had earned a full ride through a fellowship that supports students from overseas. She clicked with Alleyne who, after completing his K-8 schooling in New Jersey, went to Ghana by himself to attend a boarding school. He could relate to Poladko’s experience as a non-native student navigating a thicket of challenges in order to reap educational — and life — opportunities. 

“To understand TeenSHARP, you have to understand Ukraine and Ghana,” Alleyne said with a laugh. “We’re tough.” 

Together, they decided to apply what they’d learned and help historically marginalized students access college and become student-leaders who are successful, high achieving, and reaching their potential (these traits stand for the SHARP in TeenSHARP). These students face hurdles during the entirety of the college process, from being encouraged to apply to colleges beneath their capabilities to , on average, than white students. 

TeenSHARP launched in 2009 with 10 students in the Philadelphia area, and has since expanded across New Jersey and Delaware, graduating more than 500 students and reaching thousands more in one-off programming. At points, Alleyne has taken on outside jobs, including a stint at the Delaware Department of Education and as the founding executive director of DelawareCAN, part of the that advocates for high-quality educational opportunities for all students, regardless of where they live. His salary from those roles allowed Poladko to donate hers back to TeenSHARP, she said, noting that she has not accepted any compensation from the group she co-founded. 

For TeenSHARPies, as they’re called, activities start in 9th grade. A seven-person team communicates with students and their families, offering sessions on the college application process and financial aid applications and promoting the idea of spending 33 hours a week on schoolwork. 

When the pandemic hit, TeenSHARP made its programs virtual and started serving students from across the United States, including Georgia, Ohio, Oregon and Texas. But the staff soon realized that remote instruction was causing their students’ math skills to falter. Alleyne, who as CEO oversees operations and development, reallocated $130,000 from their roughly $1 million annual budget— a “crazy amount of money,” for them, as Poladko said — to provide small-group tutoring. TeenSHARP is largely funded by a constellation of corporations and foundations that have offices in Wilmington, Delaware, including Capital One Bank and WSFS Bank. 

The heart of the program is the intensive advising that Poladko leads for high school juniors and seniors. While carrying a caseload of more than 70 students, Poladko provides one-on-one and group instruction. She estimates spending five to seven hours working with each student just on their personal statement. 

The goal is to be as well-prepared as a student from a wealthy family. TeenSHARP organizes more than two dozen college visits each year. Students are encouraged to apply early to their first choice, and Poladko is not above getting on the phone with an admissions counselor to lobby for one of her students. Lest they get saddled with debt, she encourages students to enroll in the college that is offering them the best overall package, not the best name recognition.

During the program’s College Signing Day event in May — starting at 6 p.m. Eastern, midnight in Warsaw — Poladko passed the Zoom spotlight from one student to another to tick through their acceptances and announce which they’d selected. One student had been accepted by 16 schools. Another by 17. 

“And who is getting your talent this fall?” Poladko asked. 

Back came the responses. 

Carleton College. 

Princeton. 

Yale. 

Macalester College. 

Poladko knows the acceptances — and the decision to attend the school that’s the best fit financially — are hard earned. The program has seen student outcomes remain consistent even through the shift away from in-person support. “Trust-building virtually is definitely not easy,” she said. “But it is definitely possible if students and parents see the commitment to students’ success.”

The couple took a brief pause in June before ramping up for a month-long summer program in July. In the meanwhile, they are still making rental payments on their house in Ukraine, which is 11 miles from Bucha, where the Russian military this spring . They’re paying partly to support the landlord, who recently sent them a video of the two-story property, their stroller still parked outside the front door, and partly because Alleyne and Poladko still hope to return there when it feels safe. They like the quality of life, and Poladko needs to fulfill a residency requirement for the fellowship she received before she can apply for U.S. citizenship.

“We could technically be in our house now,” Alleyne said. “You’re just living with this risk of an air strike.”

The couple is also — now more than $35,000 — that they donate to grassroots leaders and organizations in Ukraine. (Donations are processed through a nonprofit, ; designate Ukraine Grassroots Leaders Fund.)

Wherever they end up, Alleyne and Poladko are confident that TeenSHARP will continue to work with students and families to achieve racial and economic justice. Clarke, the Oberlin student, agrees. 

“It’s really hard to stop them from doing what they do,” he said. “A pandemic, war, they just keep going. It’s really inspirational. I think to myself, ‘If they can do that, then I think anyone can’ — or I don’t see it as impossible.”

This story was supported by a reporting grant from The Pulitzer Center.

But for one graduating class at St. George Academy, a tiny Ukrainian school in New York City’s East Village, students and teachers celebrated making it through all of that earlier this month — and a war in their homeland of Ukraine, along with living through several years of a pandemic.

Between proms and college visits, St. George Academy’s graduating class of 13 made harrowing phone calls to loved ones in Ukraine, attended assemblies about the war and welcomed students who recently escaped the country — all while adjusting to spells of disrupted learning from COVID.

Although it wasn’t the graduation they expected, there was relief it was OK to celebrate such an important milestone. There were hugs and taking pictures by the balloons, meeting each other’s families and saying goodbye to teachers and the classmates who went through so much together.

In dire need of a joyous celebration, St. George’s principal Andrew Stasiw hoped for a commencement day focused on the students’ accomplishments, rather than the conflicts that plagued their school years. 

“We want our event to be as celebratory as possible, and the war has fatigued our school in many ways,” Principal Stasiw told The 74 days before the graduation. “In some ways, there is a sense that the school was robbed yet again of a ‘normal’ school year. With two years of pandemic and now this conflict, it really has not been a normal school year.”

But at the ceremony on a sunny June Saturday, the tears and pleading for Ukraine crept in.

It was impossible for the students, and even Stasiw, to ignore such topics. 

Salutatorian Vitalina Voitenko who arrived from Ukraine in 2018, focused on what she has overcome as an immigrant in her speech, becoming emotional as she spoke about a difficult year in front of family and friends. 

Many of her relatives had arrived just days before through the Uniting for Ukraine program.

“Our senior class witnessed history,” Voitenko said, surrounded by blue and yellow flags and gilded, Byzantine-style murals at the Saint George Catholic Church, behind the school, where the ceremony was held. 

“We survived COVID, political unrest,” she continued. “Now we are praying and hoping Ukraine will survive war with Russia. That’s a lot in four years of high school.”

Many of her relatives had arrived just days before through the Uniting for Ukraine program.

Class valedictorian, Fernando Mack, shared how grateful he was to graduate in person. Because of the pandemic, he thought a virtual graduation was likely. 

Although Mack is not Ukrainian and knew little about the country before attending St. George, he has loved learning the language and feels a deep connection to the homeland of some of his closest friends.

“To be here with my classmates just feels so good,” said Mack. “When everything was happening it kind of broke my heart, because that’s my classmates. We are all like family.” 

Mack recalled waking up one morning at the beginning of the invasion to a spiral of texts and videos from panicked classmates worried about friends and family still in Ukraine.

“Oh my gosh, it broke my heart … that’s their family,” He said.

Closing out a ceremony mixed with moments of joy and somber reflection, two Ukrainian born graduates, Voitenko and Sophia Klyuba, were surprised with scholarships from the Helena Poliszczuk-Diaz Memorial Scholarship Fund, a memorial scholarship for needy Ukrainian students at the St. George Academy.

Stasiw asked the crowd to keep Ukraine in their hearts, quickly jumping back on the piano playing uplifting tunes as the 13 students flipped their tassels to the other side, exiting the church as graduates, ready to take pictures and document the monumental moment.

In the backgrounds of their precious photos are reminders of the difficult time: blue and yellow flags waving in the warm June breeze, posters sharing how to support Ukraine.

Dozens of camera flashes later, students and their families filed into the school’s gym decorated with glistening “Congrats class of 2022” decorations, cake and Ukrainian “Kanapky” — open-faced ham sandwiches — from the neighborhood’s favorite butcher, Andrew Ilnicki. 

Stasiw met many of his students’ family members for the first time. Many thanked Stasiw for their child’s education.

One parent he didn’t meet was Klyuba’s mom, who couldn’t make it out of Ukraine on time. Her sister arrived two days before the ceremony.

“I’m very happy that [my sister] came in to share my excitement today and celebrate with me, but obviously I wish that my mom and grandma from Ukraine were also here.” Klyuba said.

The 13 St. George graduates had persevered through heartbreak and hardship — and triumphed.

“They are superstars,” said art teacher Irene Saviano. “They’ve been through the worst, but now they can achieve anything they want.”

All images by Meghan Gallagher for The 74.

Soon they were traveling alone, leaving behind family, friends, homes and schools, fleeing Russia’s deadly invasion of cities like Kyiv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Lviv.

One sat for hours at the border with his father stalling his departure for as long as they could. The parents of another took just 30 minutes to decide to send her to America. She called home once she had landed in New York, to be reassured family was all right, only to hear bombing in the background. 

They are all safe now, all students at St. George Academy in New York City’s Little Ukraine neighborhood in the East Village. They feel comforted to hear a language they know, customs they cherish, grateful to have a future.

Still they yearn for home.

“My whole life is left in Ukraine,” said Victoria Luchkevych, 16. “Oh my God my heart is crashing because of Ukraine.”

But their lives move forward and even as they sort through their fears and try to focus on their studies, they must adjust to a new, faster paced life. 

“There is nothing like New York City in Ukraine,” said St. George Academy’s principal Andrew Stasiw, “other than Kyiv, and Kyiv is like a quarter of what New York City is.”

The 74 asked three of St. George Academy’s newest students to talk about their experiences of living through war and leaving their lives in Ukraine earlier this year:

Maksym Kosar

Maksym Kosar considers himself “lucky.” 

Because he had family in the U.S., money and papers, the 17-year-old could escape his war-ravaged town, Ivano-Frankivsk, in Western Ukraine. 

But coming to “the safe place,” America, wasn’t without heartbreak.

On the last day of February, Maksym reunited with his mother in New York, but days before he said goodbye to his home and his father, who drove him to the border of Poland. 

There, they parked and stalled his departure for hours — talking and rearranging Maksym’s small suitcase, editing which essentials would be coming with him.

“I just packed winter clothes for about three days and my electronics and chargers,” Maksym said.

With reassurance from his father, Maksym boarded a small bus driven by a Ukrainian firefighter and began his journey.

“[My father] just told me ‘you’re going to be good, safe. Call me whenever you can,’ and that’s it,” Maksym said quietly, carefully reciting the facts of their farewell, uncertain if he will ever have a return to Ukraine, to his father.

“I was more worried, not about myself,” Maksym said, “but the people who stayed behind me.”

He calls his dad when he can, although the time difference makes it hard. He’s also been able to keep up with friends, some of whom have been juggling constant chaos with online school and volunteering for the army. 

“Their minds get crazy because of the sirens,” he said. “They don’t get enough sleep. The conditions are pretty harsh.”

Victoria Luchkevych

Just a few weeks ago, Victoria Luchkevych was anxiously bracing for the relentless barrage of sirens in Ternopil, a small village-like city in Western Ukraine when her parents deliberated, in just 30 minutes, to send her to America.

She packed just two backpacks with clothes, books, her phone and headphones, and said goodbye to her parents, sister and brothers who didn’t have the documents to leave. Now, she’s in a country she doesn’t know and left as an infant, 4,500 miles from everything that matters to her.

“My whole life [is] left in Ukraine,” said Victoria. “My heart is left in Ukraine. Oh my God my heart is crashing because of Ukraine.”

Now, Victoria lives her life moving between her uncle’s apartment in Brooklyn and her cousin’s in Queens.

In Ukraine, her mom made her breakfast and drove her down the road to school each morning. Now she fends for herself each morning.

“It’s really hard because my uncle is busy, and so is my cousin, so I’m trying to cook for myself.” Victoria said. “And then it takes like an hour to get to school.”

Between her new schedule, immersing herself in her studies and the different time zones, there’s little time to talk to her family. But when she does, they paint a picture that all is fine — something Stasiw, the school principal, has noticed many Ukrainian family members doing. 

“When my wife calls her family in Ukraine they’re all very cheerful. They’re all very light because they don’t want her to worry,” Stasiw said.

“Dad usually just wants to know how my grades are,” Victoria said.

But often, it’s impossible for families to shield their kids from the truth. 

“It’s really hard not to be stressed because two days ago I talked to my dad and while I was talking to him they bombed my city.” said Victoria. “I heard the explosions in the background.” 

Marta Slaba

Marta Slaba, the youngest of the group at just 13, has lived through war and escaped to a new country — alone.

“It all happened so fast,” said the teenager from Western ����������Ա�’s largest city, Lviv. “I never traveled on my own and I never thought I’d do it so soon. It was very nerve wracking for me.”

Her dad stayed in Ukraine, even though, because he is over 60, he could have left. “Because he has two companies he doesn’t want to leave,” Marta said.

The two have a typically rocky relationship for a young teen and her father, but the circumstances of her departure, the war, not knowing when she will see him again, makes things even harder. 

“I hope I can see him soon,” she said. “He’s still my dad and I’ve had very good times with him.”

Her mother is staying in Germany, because it “would be too much money” to come with her to America.

Living now in her grandmother’s Little Ukraine apartment, Marta said her life is “pretty OK” and she’s “trying to keep it together.” But she longs for her family and friends who are now scattered across the world. 

When she does evade tricky time zone conflicts and gets her friends on the phone, they mostly talk about “normal things” like “what we’ve been watching.”

“We don’t really talk about the war,” Marta said. “It brings on negative energy and we don’t like that.”

She mused about home and what so many are wondering.

“I do wonder if somehow,” said Marta, “someday everything will stop in Ukraine and I can return.”

Someday, perhaps, their hearts will stop crashing because of Ukraine.

Videos edited by The 74’s Jim Fields

From February until just this week, Mexico has been their second-to-last stop in a weeks-long journey; Tijuana a two or three-day respite on the way to something better, something safer, where their children can slowly work toward normalcy after their lives were upended by war. 

These displaced families — a flight away from Washington state or Illinois or South Carolina — are fanning out across the country, staying with friends and relatives, applying for food stamps and Social Security cards and enrolling their children in school. While they are far further in their relocation than the Mexican, Central American and Haitian asylum seekers waiting years for that same opportunity, these newcomers still face many hurdles.

“Everything is so different here in the U.S.,” said Anastasiia Puzhalina, a Ukrainian refugee who arrived in the States in early April alongside her family. “We must learn so much. I hope we’ll get through this.”

More than people have fled Ukraine since the start of the invasion: another have left their homes but remain inside the country. More than 1,000 education facilities have been attacked — the figure likely includes — according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The Russian invasion has been chaotic, surprisingly inept and unbearably brutal, often targeting civilians. — the exact number is a subject of debate and might not be — with hundreds discovered in . Women and girls have been to sexual assault. All of which has forced families with means to make their way out.

The refugees who arrive in Tijuana enter the encampment with pained expressions, scrambling to corral both their children and their belongings, their anxiety evidenced in their sharp tones and lack of patience with the worn-out youngsters they tote. Once inside, their mood shifts. Handed a water bottle and ice cream by dozens of Ukrainian and Russian-speaking volunteers, many of whom flew down from the U.S. to assist, they are directed to a check-in desk where a smiling blonde woman assigns each individual, couple or family a number that will be called when it’s time to leave. Other aid workers will drive them to their next stop: often San Diego International Airport. 

That’s exactly what Puzhalina was waiting for when she spoke to The 74 inside the site. She listened carefully to each number, eager for hers: 2567. Sitting under the partial shade of a palm tree, she said the family felt safe in the encampment, though they were told not to venture out into the city. Tijuana, population 1.3 million, saw in 2021. By comparison, there were , more than six times its size.

The warns Americans to avoid the city, an essential corridor for narco-trafficking and human smuggling, because of crime and kidnapping. Puzhalina didn’t know this, but could see the poverty on her way to the site: When her family was riding through town in a taxi, they came upon a building covered in barbed wire.

“I thought it was a prison,” Puzhalina said. “They told me it was a school.”

The family didn’t stay in Mexico for long: Within days, they flew to Tacoma, Washington.

Anatoli Bassarskii, 37, of Chernivtsi in western Ukraine, hadn’t decided where he and his family would move: They planned on New York City but a volunteer inside the camp, a Russian transplant who lives in Washington state, suggested they move near him: He had a friend whose home was in need of repair. The family could rent the place cheap if they helped fix it, he said.

No matter where they settle, they intend to enroll their 10-year-old son Artur in school right away so he can learn English and have only a minimal disruption to his education. Bassarskii is concerned about the fifth-grader fitting in.

“With the language barrier and different cliques of kids, I’m worried about him being bullied,” he said through a translator.

Artur, handsome with bright blue eyes, had already found playmates upon his arrival to the camp in early April and hoped for the same in the States. 

He believed his American school would be an improvement over what he had in Ukraine, with better and more up-to-date facilities. An athlete with aspirations of becoming a dentist, he wasn’t worried about assimilation. “I’m sure everyone will say hi to me,” he said, a Nike backpack slung across his shoulders. “Everyone will be my friend.”

His father hopes his son is right, because the family plans to stay in the country permanently.

“We want to live in America forever,” Bassarskii said.

Unite for Ukraine

Other asylum seekers have not been given the same priority. Fleeing the twin atrocities of gang violence and poverty in their own countries, Mexican, Central American and Haitian refugees have not been offered the expedited pathway laid out for the Ukrainians despite waiting at the border for years. 

They have been held in place by a COVID-era policy called Title 42 which, enacted in March 2020, allowed the United States to refuse their entry because of health concerns. And their living conditions are atrocious: Their flimsy tents, flooded by heavy rains and blown away by high winds, sit unguarded and vulnerable in crime-infested places like Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas, and far different from the clean and orderly Tijuana encampment. 

Here, volunteer nurses check children and adults for signs of heat stroke and aid workers from local churches come through nearly every 15 minutes with donations of toys and food, including fresh fruit and vegetables and Eastern European staples. 

Kids in clean clothes — either their own or taken from dozens of boxes of nearly new goods — play with Legos or visit a craft station where they make bracelets and necklaces with donated beads while the older children head for the basketball court or work out on the exercise equipment scattered throughout the park. 

Immigrant advocates recognize the disparity and wish for similar treatment for all. 

“I believe that everybody who has a legitimate claim and has a fear for their lives should be given the right to enter the U.S.,” Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas, told The 74. Her organization has served hundreds of thousands of people crossing over in recent years.

“Someone coming to the border asking for protection should get it,” said the revered 68-year-old Mexican-American nun, who has frequently . “It shouldn’t matter what country you are coming from.”

But that has not been the case. Last week, President Biden, who has already pledged to welcome 100,000 Ukrainian refugees, announced , a streamlined immigration program that will allow those fleeing the country to arrive in the United States directly from Europe, bypassing Mexico. They must have been in Ukraine ; have a sponsor who can financially support them — this can be in individual or organization — complete vaccinations and other public health requirements and pass background checks. The new policy went into effect Monday.

Most will receive two years of residence and authorization to work in the United States. Those who continue trying to enter the U.S. through Tijuana are subject to Title 42, but that might not last long. The restriction is set to be lifted May 23 although lawmakers from both parties worry the southern border isn’t : Tens of thousands of people are waiting for entry, including 9,000 in Reynosa alone, Pimentel said.

Adding to these concerns, the Supreme Court on the Biden administration’s attempts to end the 2018 Migrant Protection Protocols, which require some asylum seekers to remain in Mexico for the duration of their U.S. immigration proceedings.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reported nearly 15,000 encounters with Ukrainian and Russian refugees since the start of the year. It logged more than 349,008 such incidents with asylum seekers from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and Honduras in that same time period. 

One request: Peace

The children of these Ukrainian families are just starting to trickle into the nation’s schools: South Carolina, for example, has 101 more Ukrainian and 29 more Russian students today than it did around this same time last year with many enrolling in Spartanburg, Lancaster and Greenville counties.

South Carolina school districts that have called the state for assistance in admitting newcomers without transcripts have been reminded of their legal obligation to enroll these students quickly. They’re also advised to find proper translation services so they can communicate with their families. State officials say, too, newcomers are invited to participate in summer programs to help with language acquisition.

They know at least some of these students have experienced trauma on the way out of their home countries and believe schools, flush with cash because of the pandemic, are likely more equipped to help them than in years past.

And qualifying South Carolina school districts will see an increase in funding for all new immigrants, no matter their country of origin.

“We want them to feel valued … and welcomed for all of the expertise they bring to our communities,” said Susan Murphy, who serves multilingual learners at the state level.

Oksana Bevzenko, who arrived in Mexico from Kyiv with three of her children, ages 17, 14 and 4, planned to relocate to Spartanburg, South Carolina.

She spent an afternoon in early April trying to feed her daughter an orange as the child walked along the landing of a large red, blue and yellow piece of playground equipment near the center of the Tijuana encampment. 

Asked what she wanted for her children in America, she had only one request: Peace.

She’s glad to have the youngest at her side. It’s her oldest she’s worried about. At 19, he was unable to leave the country, she said, and stayed behind to deliver food and other aid in Kyiv.

“We talk every day,” she said. “He tells me he’s OK.”

Diana Zhernovnikova, mother of four children, ages 7, 5, 3 and 1, held her baby in her arms as she sat in the shade of a large white tent, her next youngest sitting across from her in a small blue stroller. She and her husband, Alexandr, were on vacation in Spain when the war broke out. They’ve not returned to their hometown of Kyiv — and they’re not sure they ever will.

Too painful to look back, she’s only looking ahead. “We’re going to join relatives in Philadelphia,” she said. “We’ll enroll the kids in school right away.”

The family, as of April 22, had not yet reached their final destination. They’re currently staying with relatives in San Antonio but still plan to head to Pennsylvania. They have not enrolled the children in school because they are still in transition.

Hamburgers and chocolate milk

Anastasiia Puzhalina, who now lives in Tacoma, has already registered her children in school. Her 10-year-old son, Illia, had expressed worry about that transition, fearing he would be misunderstood because he does not speak English.

“I’m afraid someone will be unfriendly to me because I’m a refugee,” he said when interviewed back at the encampment. “I wish I could have at least one Ukrainian- or Russian-speaking kid in my class so I could feel comfortable. I want to make friends.”

His 6-year-old sister, Virsaviia, picking up her brother’s trepidation, said she wished her cousin could be in her class, but the child is a full year younger, her mother said.

The children started school April 21. 

“They loved the first day,” their mother reported. “They remembered the names of their teachers, but didn’t remember some names of their new friends because they sound so different from our Ukrainian. They liked the lunch: burgers and chocolate milk. It sounds like a dream lunch for them. They take English classes most of the time. Everything is like in an American movie for them.”

It’s difficult to align those images with the terror the family experienced just weeks ago. 

Food was running low and the local markets were empty in Puzhalina’s hometown of Slavutych, near the border of Belarus. She had stocked up on supplies at the start of the invasion — volunteers from nearby towns brought milk, potatoes, corn and wheat for bread making — but, eventually, her community lost both gas and electricity. The family was forced to cook all of its food at once, outdoors, on an open flame fueled by wood they gathered from a nearby forest — lest it rot.

They had no internet, no working cell phones, no way to see or hear the news of what was happening in Slavutych. Puzhalina’s village wasn’t under direct fire, but there was no safe way out: The surrounding region had already been bombarded, key bridges destroyed.

Puzhalina said she asked God to show her “silence in her heart” so she and her husband would know the exact moment to escape with their three children. So, she waited for that clarity, when she could no longer hear bombs dropping in the distance, when all she heard was silence. Just then, a neighbor knocked on her door to tell her some of the families in her community were preparing to leave. She believes God answered her prayers.

“In that moment, I packed our bags, and we left,” she said, pressing a closed fist against her chest.

The family made its way to Poland along dirt roads, praying as they passed several checkpoints in a caravan of between eight and 12 cars, each packed with people. The Puzhalinas’ tiny Chevrolet Aveo, crammed with two adults and three children, was ill-suited for the off-road journey. But they somehow made it out. 

After two days of travel, they crossed into Poland on March 15. Puzhalina’s sister hosted them for a week before they moved on to Germany, where they stayed with another relative for nearly 14 days. 

Eventually, Puzhalina’s brother-in-law helped the family buy tickets from Frankfurt to Amsterdam to Mexico City and, finally, Tijuana, where they arrived April 7. 

There is only one way to describe their safe passage, she said: “It was a miracle.”

Lead Image: The Puzhalina family waits inside a Tijuana encampment for their chance to cross into America. From left to right: Illia, 10, Oleh, 32, Yeva, 9, Anastasiia, 33, Virsaviia, 6. (Jo Napolitano)

What kinds of ties have existed between Western and Russian universities?

Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, Western and Russian higher education institutions have formed and . These activities have included academic exchanges, curriculum development, joint online courses and collaborative research projects.

Russia has worked over the past two decades to make its universities . The Russian government its higher education system. This meant moving away from Soviet traditions and , particularly transitioning from the one-tier, five-year “specialist” degree to the two-tier “bachelor-master” system.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

In their , Russian universities built throughout former Soviet countries. They also offered more opportunities for and attracted more international students. The nearly tripled, from 100,900 in the 2004-2005 academic year to 282,900 a decade later.

Russian universities have opened and established joint- and dual-degree programs with Western universities in a variety of disciplines. For example, the offers joint bachelor’s and master’s degree diplomas with the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom.

What have these relationships produced?

Western and Russian students have learned about each other’s . Scientists in Russia and the West have worked together on research projects related to , , , and many other areas.

However, as geopolitical tensions grew over time, the Russian authorities became apprehensive about what they believed to be efforts “to educate young people in a pro-Western way, and inculcate a hostile ideology.” Subsequently, Putin began to stifle by imposing on them.

Russia has dissolved academic connections with the West through legislation on so-called “” and “.” The government ramped up scrutiny of foreign funding and outlawed dozens of Western think tanks, charities, and universities that previously had worked in Russia. These banned organizations include the , a nonpartisan international affairs think tank in Washington, D.C., and , a private liberal arts college in New York state.

In 2021, Russia not approved by the government. This includes cooperation with foreign universities. Before Russian academics meet with foreign scholars, they must .

In my work at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University since 2017, I have managed collaborative teaching, research and academic exchanges with universities and think tanks in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Vladivostok. I have seen students and experts in the two countries of international affairs by and learning from one another.

These interactions were formally ended by the university where I work on March 15, 2022, as they are now considered “.”

Does Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threaten these relationships?

Yes. The Ukrainian government has of Russia. Many colleges have . They have also , and . These moves are all part of a against the invasion.

While many academic leaders have about moving too quickly, some American and European universities have already with Russia completely. Universities in and collectively decided to suspend all ties with Russia.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology ended its with the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Moscow on Feb. 25. The partnership, which began in 2010, had been bolstered by a in 2019. Yet the program had been since 2018 over sponsorship from .

Many European governments, such as , , , , , have asked their universities to cut ties with Russia entirely. The United Kingdom announced on March 27 that it will for all research projects with links to Russia.

What are the reasons given for and against severing ties?

Proponents claim these actions are needed to against Putin. They also say they are meant to , reduce the , block and prevent . Chris Philp, the United Kingdom’s minister for technology and the digital economy, says he does not see how “anyone can collaborate with Russian universities.”

Opponents argue that by shutting out Russian academia, the West is and for international academic cooperation broadly. They maintain that promotes democracy and human rights, helps inside Russia and encourages conflict resolution.

Lawrence Bacow, president of Harvard University, emphasizes the value of . He points out that “individuals are not necessarily responsible for the policies of their governments.” On March 9, the university’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies with Russian universities whose administrations expressed support for the war.

How will these severed ties affect higher education in Russia?

By closing lines of communication with Russia, Western universities may be Putin’s efforts to isolate Russian students and academics. Putin wants to convince and academics, who and than the rest of the population, that there is no hope for them now that they are alone.

they increasingly feel disconnected from the West and disheartened about the future of Russian science. The Russian government declared on March 22 that it will in international conferences.

Are Russian academics free to condemn the invasion?

A climate of fear reigns over people in Russia who oppose the war. A new law punishes the spread of about the military with up to 15 years in prison. In his televised speech on March 16, Putin vowed to cleanse Russia of pro-Western “,” setting the stage for a severe domestic crackdown.

Russian scholars are unable to criticize the invasion without risking employment terminations, fines and jail sentences. Saint Petersburg State University has who were detained at anti-war protests. While issued a statement of support for the “special military operation” in Ukraine, voiced their opposition to the war in an open letter condemning the hostilities.

of fled the country in the wake of the war. They are afraid of political persecution and conscription. As , some universities abroad have opened temporary teaching and research positions for .

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

Wondering when life will return to normal in the States and abroad, they check social media for news of friends and loved ones, answer requests for cash from a relatively inexperienced yet robust civilian army and contemplate their return to the country they cherish. With no clear sense of the future, they pray for a quick resolution to the war while bracing for the possibility of a long and painful insurgency. Over the weekend, Russian troops retreated from their attempted assault on Kyiv, but what appeared to be a strategic victory quickly darkened with evidence that Russian forces had left in their wake.

Ukrainian national Marta Hulievska, 19 and a freshman at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, worries daily about her parents, with whom she speaks through WhatsApp. Her father has stayed behind in her hometown of Zaporizhzhia, eight and a half hours southeast of Kyiv, while her mother, two younger sisters and maternal grandmother fled to Lviv in early March. They’re staying with family in a cramped, two-bedroom apartment where, in an attempt at normalcy, they log onto their computers each day to continue with work and school. Hulievska’s mother is a law professor whose students struggle with unreliable internet in their own basements and bunkers. Her family’s efforts to carry on are frequently interrupted by sirens warning them to take cover. 

Sometimes, Hulievska said, they leave their building for a community shelter. Other times, they simply gather in the hallways — four adults and four children — hoping the walls can withstand a direct hit.

At least in the conflict and 2,038 have been injured as of April 2, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. But Intense fighting in areas such as Mariupol and Volnovakha and the newly discovered atrocities in Bucha outside Kyiv make it difficult to quantify the carnage.

More than Ukrainians have fled the country to date and millions more have been uprooted from their homes, but remain within its borders.

Yana Annette Lysenko, 27 and working toward a Ph.D. in comparative literature and Slavic studies at New York University, can relate to Hulievska’s worries. She fears for her aunt, uncle and cousin who fled to the outskirts of Kyiv weeks ago but have not been heard from since.

“I don’t know if their phones aren’t working or if something really bad happened,” said Lysenko. “No one can call them — even family members in Ukraine.”

William Risch, a history professor at Georgia College in Milledgeville, lived in the country for four years. He’s maintained friendships with the Ukrainian students who have passed through his classroom as well as the scholars, historians and activists he met there while researching a book on the beleaguered nation.

He recently joined a Facebook group that serves as a resource for those searching for missing or evacuated loved ones. It also lists the dead.

The professor does not yet know what happened to a who studied at his school in 2017 and who was, weeks ago, heading a territorial defense battalion defending the airport at Vasylkiv. The airport has been destroyed by the fighting.

“I did ask a friend who knows him more to tell me any updates,” Risch said. “I have not gotten any.” 

He takes heart in what little information he can find about his friends, including a former graduate student who has since joined the army and reached out asking for cash: The professor wired him $120 through Western Union.

“He said it was for food and other supplies,” Risch said. “They don’t get very much as volunteers.”

Hulievska, the Dartmouth freshman, is glad to be in regular contact with family, but it doesn’t always allay her fears. Her concerns for her parents are two-fold: She worries her father, a 57-year-old lawyer, will be drafted into the military.

“He will probably join because he thinks that is what is needed of him, that it’s his duty as a Ukrainian — and as a man,” she said. “I’m scared.”

And she knows, too, her mother, sisters and grandmother are no longer safe as Lviv has become .

Hulievska came to the United States in 2021 through an organization that helps students from low-income families attend top-tier universities around the globe. She hopes to major in creative writing and chose America for its diversity, which she believes will improve her craft.

She doesn’t know when she will see her family again.

“I was very much looking forward to going home,” she said, but, fearing the situation there will be too dangerous, she’s already asked her dean to help her find summer housing. “I miss them — a lot.”

Hulievska’s distress, which seems to grow overnight and erupt in the morning, has shaped into anxiety, a condition for which she is seeking treatment.

Yet even now, she’s inspired by the hope her family provides others: Her grandmother, a medical doctor, travels each day to a nearby train station to give urgent care and advice to those refugees who come to Lviv knowing no one at all.  

“I think it is a good example for me and a good inspiration to keep doing what I can do here on campus,” said her granddaughter. Hulievska has recently begun translating social media posts written by Ukrainians in the early days of war for one of her classes, Media Research and Creative Writing in Russian. She  receives the incoming messages from an organization called War in Translation: The translated missives appear on the group’s Twitter account.

Such a task, Hulievska said, helps those outside Ukraine feel empathy for those trapped by the conflict.

Lysenko, the fourth-year Ph.D student, has much to lose in the war. She’s concerned about her boyfriend, who lives in Odessa, and might soon be drawn into the fighting.  

“He lives between three military bases and sometimes sees rockets flying over his apartment,” she said.

The graduate student wonders if she’d be better off relocating to Europe so she could use her Ukrainian and Russian language skills to assist incoming refugees.

“I definitely feel I’d be doing something better if I’m helping in some way,” she said, adding it’s difficult to watch the tragedy unfold from afar. “My plan is to get through this semester and once I submit the rest of the work I have to do, evaluate then.”

Marina Shapar, 26 and who spoke to The 74 last month from her basement in Kyiv, a shelter she shared with nine other people, including her parents, siblings and neighbors, has since fled the country. After passing through the Slovakian border, she moved by train through the Czech Republic before landing in Poland.

She’s currently staying with a friend in Finland and remains on constant alert about the rest of her family, who plan to return to Kyiv — they’re temporarily relocated to the western part of the country — as soon as they deem it safe.

“To be honest,” Shapar said, “they said they planned to go home in one and a half months. I do not fully support this idea.”

As for Shapar, it’s unclear when she will be reunited with her family as her hopes for the outcome of the war might not be reached.

“I decided to go back as soon as the Ukrainian government confirms our victory,” she said.

“We’re shell shocked,” said Andrew Stasiw, principal of the tiny Ukrainian Catholic high school in the East Village. “We have students breaking down and crying. We’re trying to run school as normally as possible … but it’s impossible not to be thinking of Ukraine.”

And because it is impossible not to be thinking of Ukraine, life inside the high school that opened in 1947 in the city’s Little Ukraine neighborhood has strayed far from class routines and schedules for its 80 students, their teachers and staff. 

For many at St. George Academy, the country currently under attack by Russia is home — and the pull toward home remains strong. 

A teacher is desperately trying to get her 11 grandchildren out of Ukraine. A guidance counselor’s job has shifted from discussions about college and career with students to discussions about life and death. 

Students are fearful Russian spies are hacking their laptops. A student’s escape from Ukraine meant leaving his father and friends behind to fight. Now the teen is grappling with guilt and worry — and the lingering question of whether he too should have stayed.

“I know at least four young men that are here … many of them who would go [to fight Russia]. Parents have reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, try to talk to them, and let them know that they can do more good from here,’” Stasiw said, “Parents have that knee jerk reaction to protect their children.”

Before the news broke, guidance counselor Nicole Giovenco’s day revolved around reading college applications and enrolling students in AP exams. Now, students come knocking on her door asking her to listen to their fears about the war.

“Some of them have brothers over there fighting,” said Giovenco. “They get that one phone call or WhatsApp message a day from them, if they’re lucky, and if they don’t they have no idea what to think.” 

There have been moments when Stasiw has broken down, tearing up about the crisis. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine, has inspired him to stay strong for his students. 

“Leadership has to lead, and in a microcosm, I’m a leader of a very small school here,” he said.

Once, St. George Academy enrolled 900 Ukrainian students. Now just 40 percent are of Ukrainian heritage, though the school still emphasizes the country’s culture. Three Ukrainian refugee students have enrolled in recent days — and more are expected.

At the urging of his mother in New York who had wanted him to come live with her, Maksym Kosar, 17, packed an escape bag with dried food, water and his passport a week before his hometown, Ivano-Frankivsk, a city in western Ukraine, was invaded. The morning he heard bombs going off he fled on his own. He made his way out safely, but his father stayed behind to fight.

“My dad is in Ukraine because he couldn’t leave at the moment,” said Maksym during his first day at the school. “I will call him as soon as I get home.” 

School staff are also managing dire family affairs from afar: A Ukrainian teacher has taken days off, desperate to arrange the escape of her 11 grandchildren, who span 4 months to 11 years old.

“She’s wrecked,” was all Stasiw would say about the situation.

Irene Saviano, who teaches art and works in the office, was excited to start working on this year’s pysanky — Ukrainian Easter eggs — with her students, but the project has been put on hold because everyone at St. George Academy is focused on the war.

Ukrainian culture, from learning about the eggs to singing traditional hymns, is woven into the school culture. Now, said Saviano, those traditions and lessons have taken on a new importance, giving students a renewed sense of pride.

“Everybody’s singing Ukrainian,” Saviano said. “They don’t refuse it. They actually welcome it.”

As Stasiw popped in and out of classrooms, students ran up to him eager to share updates. Many found it too painful and dangerous to speak about the war and, in Ukrainian, told their principal why.

“They’re afraid the interview will get them in trouble with Putin,” Stasiw translated.

Walking down a hallway adorned with blue and yellow posters, Stasiw was stopped by a student with another fear: He thought his laptop’s security had been compromised by Russian spies. 

“There are threats of cyber attacks happening in this neighborhood,” he shared, telling the student he would take a look.

Stasiw said it’s been hard to know exactly what to do and say to students, so he prepared a presentation “to explain to them what’s going on, especially for the non-Ukrainian students. 

“I talked about how we have to be compassionate and how Ukrainians do not hate Russians,” he said. 

For students like Janna, 17, who lived in Ukraine until she was nine-years-old and still has family there, discussing the war is helping her cope.

“It feels like a nightmare,” she said. “Raising awareness is good.”

Sparking discussion and keeping his culture close, Oleh Holintayy, 15, like many other St. George students, has swapped out his uniform for a vyshyvanka, a traditional embroidered Ukrainian shirt.

“This vyshyvanka was made by my great-grandmother, who’s still in Ukraine,” said Holintayy. The teen, who emigrated from Ukraine when he was three, has slept little in recent weeks and become obsessed with checking his phone for updates.

Just like other students at Saint George, seniors Sophia Klyuba and Vitalina Voitenko can only think about the safety of their loved ones in Ukraine.

“My whole family except for my dad is in Ukraine. My mom, my grandma, sister, nephew, aunt and uncle,” Sophia, 17. “You cannot really focus on anything else and think about anything else… You call your family to know that they’re still alive and well. I really want to be with them right now even though it’s very dangerous … I cannot imagine anything happening to them.”

St. George students and staff have looked for ways to show support for their homeland — from singing the Ukrainian national anthem in front of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul at their church, to sending messages to soldiers. Stasiw told students they could also help by spreading the word about the charity St. George Academy partnered with, , which raises funds to send over medical supplies.

Together the students traveled to Washington D.C. to protest the war, toting the signs they assembled inside their small, proud-to-be Ukrainian high school.

Many public employee pensions, including those covering teachers, are significantly exposed to a Russian financial market that has taken a drubbing in response to Western sanctions this month. Within days of the Russian invasion, Colorado’s state pension fund removed over $7 million held in Sberbank, a substantially state-owned Russian bank. Legislators in Massachusetts, Illinois, and New Jersey that would push state treasurers to liquidate Russian holdings, while governors and other officials in Virginia, Ohio, Maryland, Washington State, California, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut have advocated either for full-scale divestment or reviews of their portfolios. Pension funds in and are following suit. 

In a letter to his state’s three largest retirement systems, that their fiduciary duties to beneficiaries “demand that you act to address Russia’s aggressions and immediately restrict Russian access to California’s capital and investments.”

The sudden push has been framed as a blow against military aggression. But disentangling public funds from foreign entities in countries like Russia may also pose further challenges to their short-run health of already stressed retirement systems. Given the ruble’s precipitous decline in value, states must decide whether to sell off their control over assets ; with the restrictions placed on stock trading of Russian entities, some investors are . And that’s without considering the logistical challenges of identifying and severing ties to foreign investments in the first place.

Chad Aldeman, the policy director at Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, said that teachers might be surprised to learn that their retirement contributions were mingled with assets overseas.

“I would say that, through their pension funds, teachers are invested in far more exotic assets and investments than the typical 401(k) investor,” Aldeman said. “There are all kinds of different financial strategies they’re pursuing, and they’re more aggressive about finding different types of investments, like lumber or coffee or international avenues like Russia.”

The dilemma showcases . Increasingly, major American investors — including pensions, but also 401(k) plans and endowments — have tended to favor positions in “passive” funds that track stock indexes rather than paying managers to pick winners for them. The switch comes in response to the high fees and disappointing performance resulting from “active” investments in the past, such as the Alabama retirement system’s in a now-defunct chain of movie theaters. By contrast, Nevada’s public employee pension a few years ago, shrinking its investment office to just one man whose professed strategy was to do “as little as possible.”

But Aldeman observed that many public pensions still have considerable sums tied into such investments, including those in foreign markets.

“They’re stretching to hit an investment target, and to do that, they’re trying to find the absolute best investments out there,” he said.

Moving away from that posture, even in response to global condemnation of Russia’s actions, may come at a price. As a case in point, the Kentucky Teachers’ Retirement Fund in late February for $12.4 million. That was over $3 million less than it cost to buy them in 2017. 

That figure recedes a bit in the context of . But the system is already , and such losses may contribute to the perception of mismanagement. Ted Siedle is a pensions expert and writer who has authored investigations into retirement systems in several states, including commissioned by the state teachers’ union. In an interview, he cited the example of Ohio’s pension fund, which lost over the last decade in a deal with a Texas private equity firm. 

“That’s not a whole lot for a $100 billion pension fund to lose, but the people whose money it is didn’t look at it that way,” Siedle said. “The teachers were pissed! That’s money that could have gone to their cost-of-living adjustments. And for some pensions, the Russian holdings could be a significant amount.”

A key problem, Siedle argued, is that the boards of pension plans are typically filled with laymen with insignificant financial expertise, like municipal leaders and retired public employees. They are also not governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, the main federal body of regulations over private pensions. As a consequence, the systems are viewed by Wall Street intermediaries like hedge funds as “the dumbest investors out there,” he said.

Even amid a wave of divestment from Russian industry, it may be difficult for teachers’ pension funds to distance themselves. For one thing, Aldeman noted, they could face “lock up fees” from their managers for canceling their investments early; those might come on top of financial losses from selling assets whose market value is plummeting.

Beyond that, , lower transparency requirements outside ERISA will mean that pension funds may find it difficult to even identify where their money is invested. In other words, not only are teachers unaware of the scope of their exposure to the Russian economy, but so are the pension systems themselves.

“There’s no accountability. Who’s even going to tell them? The money manager would have to honestly tell the pension fund, and then the pension fund would have to honestly tell the public. The chances of that happening are slim to none.”

“Again in the shelter.”

“They are shooting the airport.”

“Our airport.”  

Hulievska, 19 and a freshman at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, came to the United States from Ukraine last year through an organization meant to help students from low-income families attend top-tier universities around the world. She hopes to major in creative writing and chose America for its diversity, which she believes will strengthen her craft.

She’s just one of from Ukraine living in the United States. Many have struggled to balance their studies with painful images from home, including possible

Hulievska’s move across the globe meant new opportunities, but also that she would leave behind her mother, father, two younger siblings, ages 13 and 7, and maternal grandmother. They’ve spent the past few days climbing in and out of a community shelter meant to ensure their safety as bombs slam into their home town of Zaporizhzhia, eight and a half hours southeast of Kyiv.

The town is of particular interest to occupying forces because it contains a nuclear power station, Hulievska said: Russian troops have been encroaching for days. They’ve already taken over her paternal grandmother’s village. The elderly woman no longer leaves her home.

The first time Hulievska’s family told her they were fleeing their apartment, she crumbled.

“I honestly started crying straight away,” she said, adding that her parents tried to soften the news by sending a selfie of them smiling in the shelter, telling her everything was OK.

 It helped, at least a little, she said. But a daughter worries.

“Your mind starts to imagine all kinds of bad things,” she said.

����������Ա�’s in this David and Goliath battle has won hearts around the world, with college students across the United States, , showing their support for the beleaguered nation through protests and fundraisers.

The fighting has been brutal with bodies strewn throughout the capital city of Kyiv. Local authorities say Ukrainians are already dead. Residents hiding in their basements or in area shelters, buoyed by the international support, say they hope their military and civilian army can prevent a takeover. Some have fled the country since the fighting broke out a week ago.

Peace talks have faltered but international economic pressure on Russia could force the nation to reconsider as the ruble, Vice President Kamala Harris said,

Hulievska is no expert on international politics, she said, but believes her country will stand for a few days more, adding it’s heart wrenching to watch the conflict unfold from afar. She thought she’d be able to focus on her studies through the crisis but learned, in recent days, that she has limits.

“Right now, whenever I do some work, it just feels so meaningless,” she said. “I stopped caring about grades. It’s a totally different type of thinking.”

But it’s not just Ukrainian-born students who are agitated to the point of distraction. William Risch, a history professor at Georgia College in Milledgeville, has many ties to the country: Not only did he live there for four years, but a who studied at Risch’s school in 2017 is now head of a territorial defense battalion defending the airport at Vasylkiv, a strategic site Russian forces have been .

Risch is heartsick at the thought of the inquisitive young man in the throes of combat, unsure if he is alive or dead. He remembers the student coming to his office to talk about Ukrainian politics, expressing skepticism over the country’s future.

The professor, whose areas of study include ​​Russia, the Soviet Union and central Europe, was surprised to learn he had taken up arms though many of Risch’s professional contacts in Ukraine, including a lawyer and a historian with no prior military experience, have already done the same.

Risch fears for all of them.   

“There is nothing else I can say,” he said. “Sometimes I just feel sick.”

Yana Annette Lysenko, 27 and working toward a Ph.D. in comparative literature and Slavic studies at New York University, shares his concern.

Though she was born in the United States, she visited Ukraine nearly every summer in her youth and continued to travel there into her adulthood. She left the country just two months ago with plans to return: She came back to the States only to find a subletter for her Queens apartment.

Much of Lysenko’s extended family remains in the country. An aunt, uncle and cousin recently fled from Kyiv.

Adding to her anguish, her Ukrainian boyfriend might soon join the fighting.

“I have loved ones at stake, their safety, well-being — everything is on the line,” she said. “It’s a lot of grief of sitting and having no clue what will happen.”

There was, at the time she left Ukraine, some speculation that Russia could attack, but the invasion still came as a surprise. Lysenko has had a hard time focusing ever since Russian troops entered the country.

“Work has taken a back seat to this,” she said. “Every time I go on to the internet, I see new updates, buildings being bombed, cities I’ve been to and have seen in real life. It’s a really hard thing to come to terms with as someone who has never personally seen war.”

Lysenko said she plans to relocate once the fighting is over.

“I still want to go back,” she said. “That’s my goal. I really love it there. I have a deep attachment to it: It’s my heritage, my roots.”

On an even more practical level, the country is the subject of her dissertation, though it, too, is on hold as she copes with news of the occupation.

Hulievska, from Dartmouth, understands the delay. She was so worried about keeping up with her own studies that she asked her professors for extensions for incomplete assignments. With the encouragement of her dean, they’ve accommodated her requests.

“I just cannot do any kind of work right now except for organizing rallies and fundraisers,” she said.

Her efforts — and those of many other U.S-based students — have not gone unnoticed in the war zone.

Marina Shapar, 26, told The 74 she’s spent the last several days living inside her basement in Kyiv with nine other people, including her parents, siblings and neighbors. She communicates with friends and relatives via cell phone to keep track of Russian advancement and to determine when it’s safe to go out for food.

Shapar, who shared video clips of blood-soaked bodies lying dead in the street, is encouraged by the support she’s seeing from abroad. But she’s also worried about the virulent misinformation campaigns that mischaracterize ����������Ա�’s stance on the invasion and downplay its suffering.

She asks that young people help spread the truth.

“You know,” she said, “students are our future.”

Lead Image: Marta Hulievska, 19 and a freshman at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, pictured in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. Hulievska is trying to balance news of the war — her family is in and out of bomb shelters daily — with her studies. (Anna Haiuk)