While most of Chapel Hill was sleeping in the early hours of Feb. 24, junior Maria Zola’s father frantically rushed to dial her grandparents in Poland. Only minutes before on the other side of the world, Russia had begun bombing Poland’s neighbor, Ukraine.
“Even though they’re not directly being shelled, we’re incredibly worried about my family overseas,” said Zola, one of three co-presidents of the Slavic Club. “There is absolutely no justification for the Russian invasion. Like Poland, Ukraine is a democratic country, and has been independent from the Soviet Union for decades.”
As the war in Ukraine has intensified over the past month, with a mounting civilian death toll and millions of Ukrainian refugees forced to leave their home, students and staff of Eastern European descent have tracked events with wrenching concern. Many have family and friends within the war zone, which now includes all of Ukraine, and on its periphery. A recent bombing attack by Russian forces was a mere 13 miles from the Polish border.
East students have described extremely difficult circumstances for their family members not only in Ukraine and Poland, but also in Russia, where economic sanctions are having a devastating impact on the economy and where Kremlin propaganda and crackdowns on free speech have alarmed ordinary citizens. While voices from inside Russia have been stifled, East students provide an inside view of the punishing effect of economic sanctions upon the daily lives of ordinary Russians.
“Sanctions are absolutely crushing,” said senior Slava Bargesian, whose family left Russia for the United States in 2015. “The ruble is worth less than a penny. My family members in Russia are struggling to obtain food and basic necessities. It’s really uncertain how long they can continue.”
Senior Daniela Danilova was born in Russia, but moved to the United States in elementary school.
“I’m very worried for the well-being of my grandfather. He’s an architect, so he relies on the commission he gets from different projects,” she said. “There’s not a lot of new buildings being built, since the economy is being decimated, so I’m just alarmed by what this means for his career. And especially for my aunt and her family—they have kids who are pretty young, so I just worry for what this means for their future.”
Spreading propaganda about the war, Russian state-sponsored media outlets have claimed that the goal of the conflict is to “eradicate Nazism” from Ukraine, a claim made all the more bizarre by the fact that Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, is Jewish. The government has also closed all independent media outlets and has prohibited foreign journalists from contradicting government statements—in fact, they cannot even use the word “war” in their reporting.
“All of the alternative news sources, they’re just shutting it all down,” Danilova said. “They’re shutting down what my grandfather listens to, and they’re shutting down Twitter, and YouTube will probably go next. It’s always been hard to get information in Russia, but now it’s totally constricted.”
Danilova noted that many ordinary Russians are opposed to the war, with thousands of protesters having been arrested since the war began. Danilova believes that those who support the war are only doing so because they are being deceived by the Russian media.
“The media is a mouthpiece for the government and completely mischaracterizes the invasion as a ‘special military operation.’ But this is not a military operation. It’s hitting civilian areas. It’s hitting hospitals. It’s hitting schools. People don’t have access to water and entire towns have been seized,” Danilova said.
Bargesian’s family has also faced issues with state media control.
“The onslaught of misinformation in Russia is pathetic,” Bargesian said. “Being spoon-fed [false] information… you’re sacrificing your humanity, almost like becoming a robot.”
With friends in Ukraine who are subjected to near constant shelling, Bargesian and his parents have expressed their outrage by attending protests in Raleigh, while continuing to donate to Ukrainian relief organizations.
Since the invasion, nearly one million Ukrainian refugees have fled to Poland. Searing images of the mass murder of civilians in Bucha, the rocket attack on the Kramatorsk train station, and packed transit hubs across the country with children and families barely fleeing Ukraine alive have sparked international outrage. In a great outpouring of compassion, many nations, organizations and individual volunteers from around the world are donating humanitarian supplies. Members of East’s Ethics Club, with help from Mr. Murphy, have taken an active role in addressing the crisis by making and selling buttons to raise funds for refugee resettlement programs.
Zola explained that many refugees have relatives in Poland, with whom they are able to stay, at least in the near-term.
“For people who don’t have anywhere to go, who have virtually nothing left because Russia has bombed their homes and communities, [they] feel like Poland is a good option,” she said. “Poles are very welcoming; we will do everything in our ability to help our Ukrainian neighbors.”
Zola also believes that it is very important that the crisis in Ukraine be discussed in East’s classrooms.
“In my history class our teacher gave us a brief history of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, with Russia trying to keep Ukraine within this little power dome, and Ukraine trying to break off into NATO,” she said. “I thought that was really helpful for understanding the context behind the conflict, and she gave us a timeline of the events that are happening in the world right now.”
Warning that the conflict in Ukraine also could have worldwide ramifications, Zola expressed concern for all of Eastern Europe as well as other contested territories.
“It could spread if China comes for Taiwan next. Also, the whole world is tied together by imports and exports, so when there are disruptions, it affects everyone.”
While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is without precedent in modern times, it carries echoes of the past for these students and their families, who are all too familiar with the dire consequences of Russian aggression and autocratic rule. Despite being independent from Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Eastern European countries have been forced to remain vigilant about the threat posed by Russia, a threat which today seems much more exigent than it did a month ago.
Heather Burek, who teaches Civics, serves as advisor of the Slavic Club and spent many years living in Czechoslovakia. She sees the war in the broader context of the threat it poses to the European security arrangements that have kept peace on the continent since the end of the Cold War.
“It’s not just a Ukrainian issue, it’s a Czechoslovakia issue, it’s a Poland issue, it’s a Yugoslavia issue. All those countries that were part of the Eastern block are now at risk. People of the older generation, they remember the tanks rolling through their streets… it’s not that long ago, and they remember.”
Reflecting the sentiments of the many concerned students and faculty at East, Zola is hopeful that peace will be restored, that the Ukrainian refugees will be able to return to their homes, and that Eastern Europe will not have to live under a cloud of fear.
“In the meantime, though, we need to be asking ourselves, ‘What can I do to help?’” Zola said.
Photo courtesy of Christiaan Triebert/Flickr
