When senior Vladyslav Dribnokhod checked his phone before pulling onto ELCO Drive on the morning of Thursday, February 24, he scrolled through horrifying messages from his friends in Ukraine: his country of 13-and-a-half years had been invaded by Russian troops in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military invasion on baseless claims of Ukrainians committing genocide on other Ukranians. 

     “I’ll never forget the moment that I got, like, 65 messages from my friends saying to pick up my phone. I was shocked and angry [that Russia invaded Ukraine]; I’m not gonna lie. At that point, I just wanted to spread awareness of what was happening because of my family members and relatives that lived in the Donbas region. That’s the region [Russia] annexed in 2014, so I know what it means to live under the shelling and bombs, and I just wanted everyone around me to know what was going on,” Dribnokhod said. In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea believing that it was rightfully their territory. Although Russia tried to invade Dribnokhod’s hometown and second-largest Ukrainian city, Kharkiv, they were unsuccessful, taking the cities of Donbas and Lugansk instead. This caused many of Dribnokhod’s cousins to flee as they lived in those cities. Because of the 2014 invasion, Dribnokhod; his parents; and his brother, junior Bogdan Dribnokhod, emigrated to America, settling in Newmanstown as his grandparents had already lived there for over 20 years. Fast forward eight years to Russia invading Kharkiv.   

    “The city of Kharkiv has 216 school districts...the school districts are smaller because it’s condensed, so it’s about 1,000 people per school district. So at this point, 120 schools have been destroyed completely, so that means about 120,000 [students] have nowhere to go now. So, I’m not even talking about 53 kindergartens and 21 university campuses that have been destroyed--it’s [an entire] city, and the amount of pain and suffering is just insane, and the scale is really big,” Dribnokhod said. 

     According to the Washington Post, NATO estimated that there were 18,600 Ukrainian casualties as of April 8, while Russia had lost anywhere from 7,000 to 15,000 troops. WWII-esque, Ukrainians sheltered in subway stations to survive Russian bombs, while other Ukrainians stood on the frontlines along with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. 

    “One of my Sunday school teachers was hiding in the basement and just a regular bomb hit their backyard, so all of the windows in the house shattered, and...my church building where we used to go also had shattered windows...nothing major though. Although, the house where my grandparents used to lived was destroyed completely, so it burned to the ground,” Dribnokhod said. As 4.5 million refugees left Ukraine as of March 18, thousands of healthcare workers and civilians stayed to help their neighbors in need and fight to keep their democratic freedoms.

    “...you see how everyone is united, how old people are helping young people, and young people are helping old people. Everyone, no matter who they are, is helping each other. It’s beautiful to see people from Western Ukraine accepting refugees from Eastern Ukraine,” Dribnokhod said.

    Although the majority of Russians supported the invasion of Ukraine, some, like sophomore Liubov Gavriliuk, supported the Ukrainians. Living in Siberia until she was 13, Gavriliuk and her family waited three years until receiving papers for their move to the United States, although the Russian government did not play a role in their move. Even though Gavriliuk expressed her love for Russia, she was shocked about the invasion.

    “I was not expecting it because Russia and Ukraine are really close. They look the same, and some Ukrainians can speak Russian. I can actually speak a little bit of Ukrainian. I was shocked when it heard it, and I was like really? A lot of people asked me about it like Do you think its going to be--No, [Russia and Ukraine] are like brothers, and I have a lot of friends that are from Ukraine. My dad is actually from Ukraine, my mom is half German-half Russian, and I’m mixed, so there is nothing bad about Ukraine, and I was shocked [when I found out],” Gavriliuk said.

    Throughout the unknowns of the conflict, the one constant for both Gavriliuk and Dribnokhod was their Christian faith.

    “I’m not [supporting the invasion] because I’m Christian, and the thing is that we are all brothers and sisters. We cannot kill anyone because we [are Christians and] could not support this, so I don’t support anything like that...People want to live without war, have a good time with their families, and be together, and not be in war and be separated from their families. A lot of parents lost their kids, and it’s not good in Russia and Ukraine. This conflict hurts everyone in this world, so it should stop,” Gavriliuk said.

    “Personally, I’m a Christian, so I’ll always look at this [conflict] from a biblical perspective. If God is in charge, he is sovereign, so he knows what’s going on. For me personally, I see this as an opportunity to serve people, and a lot of my friends in Ukraine [see it the same way]. They are volunteering  and delivering food, medication, and water because a lot of people don’t have running water. Some don’t have food, so I know a lot of people from my church right now  are very busy trying to deliver all the supplies. It’s an opportunity to serve, but at the same time its just so painful seeing the amount of pain and depression...[In Bucha], they have been liberated a couple days ago from Russia, and now we’ve discovered dead people, dead civilians shot in their heads. I think it’s very unethical for politicians to play big political games while people are dying, so I think we should focus on the importance of humans lives, and how important it is that humans are dying. People are dying; it’s not the time to play political games,” Dribnokhod said. Story by L. Bickel