By Lorelai Sykes
One year later, another spring settles over Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Dogwood trees reveal their pink and white blooms as baby birds and squirrels dart out between the parade of bare legs stretching out after winter. Spring usually brings change and rebirth, but there are still some darker things that manage to stick around.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine began on Feb. 24, 2022. It has been a year full of displacement, worries and fear. Now headlines about the war fade into the background and give the facade that things are getting better.
Even across oceans, students in Chapel Hill with ties to Ukraine and Russia are still navigating the lasting effects of the war.
Protecting her son: Liubov Palchak
Liubov Palchak is a graduate student studying pharmaceutical sciences at UNC-Chapel Hill, and her story of how she came to North Carolina is far from anything she ever expected for herself.
From the easternmost parts of the country, Palchak was born in Bakhmut. It is a small town located in the Donetsk Oblast region of Ukraine. Her family lived across the Donetsk Oblast region, so pointing to any one area as “home” is tricky.
“I was like every child in the world, I had a perfect childhood,” Palchak said. “My native city was not too big and everybody knew each other, and neighbors were friendly. I moved back to Bakhmut when my son was born, it is easier with little kids to be in small towns. I think a lot of good things happened in Bakhmut.”
While pursuing her undergraduate degree, she spent a few years moving around Ukraine. After attending Donetsk National Medical University, she entered the workforce at the same university, tending to medical needs in multiple cities.
With some inspiration from her parents working in chemistry and microbiology, Palchak said that in 11th grade, she knew she wanted to pursue medicine. She said that if she could improve people’s quality of life, she had to act on it.
But today, her hometown of Bakhmut and the Donetsk region as a whole is one of the most occupied areas of Ukraine. Palchak has lived with the threat of Russian forces since 2014, but now, it is significantly worse. Last year, she made the final, gut-wrenching decision to flee the country.
She knew she had to protect herself and her son Misha.
“After the first bomb dropped in Kramatorsk airport, I realized I did not have a nearby safety place,” Palchak said. “I read a lot of papers that said that Russia could try again. I realized that if it started I must find some type of safety.”
On March 2, 2022, Palchak made her way to immigration services.
She did not just leave behind her home and place of work: She also left behind her husband, who works to distribute electricity to citizens; her father, who is still teaching chemistry but online after his school was destroyed; and many more family members.
Still, even after all of this, she is quick to bring up again how grateful she is to be in North Carolina. Through a smile, she said Misha is learning English better than she is and that he is so lucky to be at school in person rather than online like children still in Ukraine.
With a two-year visa inching closer to expiration, Palchak does not know what will come next. But for now, she and Misha are safe.
Summers at home: Lily Fishman
The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is hardly a new phenomenon. Attacks and the threat of invasion have steadily increased throughout the early 2010s. For U.S. citizens with family abroad, the option of international travel and family visitation has slowly fizzled out.
Lily Fishman is an undergraduate student at UNC-CH. Her father is from Moscow, Russia, while her mother is from Zarichne, Ukraine. Throughout her childhood, she spent summers visiting her family in Russia and Ukraine, fond memories that she holds a little tighter today.
“We would stay at a family friend’s house in very rural Ukraine,” Fishman said. “There was a mountain up there, and we would go and pick blackberries and cherries up there.”
While laughing, she said that after picking berries on the mountainside, she would go into town with her little brother under the care of an older friend, who was rather reluctant to leave his video game, to go into the candy stores with just a handful of hryvnia, the Ukrainian equivalent to a United States cent.
For Fishman, it helped that the constant buzz of reporting about the war has died down. Most efforts on campus — like signed Ukrainian flags on display — have not offered her much solace. Rather, aid efforts to support those directly affected in Ukraine bring some peace of mind.
Fishman managed a fundraiser last semester that brought her some peace by sending over medical supplies such as bandages and ointments that were in demand during the start of the war.
Phone calls to Ukraine: Mykhailo “Misha” Shvets
As the conflict wears on, students on campus carry an insurmountable weight with them daily.
Mykhailo “Misha” Shvets is a doctoral student and graduate teaching assistant in the Department of Computer Science. He waved and pointed to his phone, mumbling a quick goodbye to his mother on the other line.
“Before the war, I used to only call her about once a week for maybe 30 minutes,” Shvets said. “But now we talk multiple times a week, maybe for hours at a time.”
Shvets is from the city of Dnipro, where his mother still resides today. His father lives in Kyiv with his two young children. In a piece written by Shvets in May of last year, he described the hurt he feels daily.
“Every day since Feb. 24 for me, as for all Ukrainians, has been filled with endless pain watching as cities are destroyed and civilians tortured, raped and murdered.” In another excerpt, he wrote, “My father made dangerous trips every day to find a place with some poor cell phone connection to get news and send a few texts like:
“They fired mortars over our heads, now enemy tanks are firing a little from the side — loud explosions. About 200 meters from us.”
Shvets came to the U.S. to pursue his doctoral degree. Before the war, he walked into Sitterson Hall with his head down and buried in his work, making his way straight to his office. Shvets said there are not many students in the program from Europe, especially not Ukraine.
Now, a year later, he said he has found a community of Ukrainians in North Carolina. While the circumstances are far from ideal, he is now connecting with his culture more than ever before.
“On Feb. 24, 2023, we had a vigil again and hundreds of people showed up,” Shvets said. “I’m looking around the crowd at a few hundred people and I pretty much know everyone now.”
Shvets said that he understands that it is now his job to deliver a message to the people in the U.S. and to facilitate conversations about the conflict abroad.
Shvets remembers Ukraine fondly. He recounted camping trips with his father in the mountains of Crimea and the hikes down to the beaches of the Black Sea, and how his mother still sends him care packages stuffed with candies from his childhood.
In one of his lengthy phone calls, he told her that he was wearing a Vyshyvanka, a traditional Ukrainian shirt, every day until the occupation was over. The one he wore today was a delicate linen fabric embroidered with careful shades of blue stitching across his chest.
One year later, the pain and loss of the war still sits heavy in the humid spring air. Despite the loss that Ukrainians have suffered, another spring brings with it strength and resilience.
Edited by Valeria Cloës and Anna Neil.