Young Ukrainians mourn life before war but ‘are strong and have no time to panic’ – World News

Ukrainian student Julia Kolisnychenko peered through her window to find a ravaged cityscape; shell craters, buildings collapsing in on themselves and shattered glass lining the streets of her hometown in Kyiv.

The 18-year-old found herself in the midst of a warzone, but Julia and her family have since taken refuge in a desolate village in Western Ukraine, leaving behind their readily available water supply and stable WiFi connection.

“We decided to move because a bomb fell right near us. It created a hole in the ground and it also damaged people’s houses”, she tells the Mirror’s NextGen project.

Through our lagging Zoom call, Julia tilts her head upward, strains her eyes and hesitates a little before admitting that she doesn’t really know where she is.

“It’s like a village from the 1900s, so there is no water for my shower. There’s no WiFi, so I’m just using my mobile internet.”

Julia, who is currently studying at Ukraine’s Institute of International Relations, like many young people in Ukraine fears that the war has robbed her of her education.

“This is the thing I’m really struggling with. I’ve been studying all my life and I entered into the best university in Ukraine, but now there’s no indication.

“If classes start, I might not be able to attend because of my internet”, she says.

Julia’s dreams of studying law at Oxford University came to a halt when the college fund that her parents had been collecting for her was donated in its entirety to help support the Ukrainian army.

“I really wanted to study law at Oxford because I saw that there is a faculty of human rights and it was really interesting to me.

“I don’t feel guilty about sending the money to our army because we are helping our country, but now, I see that my dream is not really possible at all.”

And yet, Julia’s home and her education are not the only two things that she has lost since the war began.

All of her school friends have now fled the country.

“All my friends that studied with me in the institute have left Ukraine, and now they are in Spain, Germany or The Netherlands.

“They are telling me that they will try to study there. They won’t come back to me, so I won’t see them. I’m really glad that they are in a safe place, but it’s hard.”

Though even in such trying times, worldwide support for Ukraine has provided Julia with a glimmer of hope that things will soon return to normal.

“It’s really cool to see the support. Yesterday I saw that one of my favourite characters from Harry Potter was wearing a T-shirt with the Ukrainian flag.”

And despite living in the backdrop of a war, she points to TikTok as a lighthearted outlet through which she documents her life in Ukraine.

Julia’s videos have garnered support from viewers across the globe.

“This might be strange, but TikTok really helps.”

“When you post a video, lots of people write to you with words of support. It’s so cool when someone comments from another part of the world.”

The support has only encouraged Julia to continue working hard so that one day she can fulfil her goal of studying law at Oxford university.

“I want to continue studying of course, and will do what I can because I hope that my dreams will come true.”

Like Julia, millions of other displaced young people across Ukraine have been mourning the loss of their lives and daily routines before the war.

But some have stayed in Kyiv, despite the danger.

Anastasiia Levchenko, 23, is from Odessa but has lived in Kyiv for seven years working as a journalist.

She deeply misses the life she led before war broke out but is resilient.

“Before the war I had my work, I was in different places, in Ukraine, abroad, I really enjoyed my job. I had a lot of friends,” she says.

“After work we’d go to the cinema or we had a lot of weekends we’d travel abroad. If not, we would go to Odessa. I was active, I enjoyed my life.

“But when the war started I couldn’t leave my house. I didn’t see my friends or my boyfriend from that moment when the war started. I am speaking with them online, but it’s not the same.”

She has been working as a journalist throughout the bombardment of Kyiv and has been contacted by news organisations all over the world.

While working on a report at a local hospital, Anastasiia and her team were nearly hit by a rocket blast but they carried on.

“I was doing an interview in Kyiv hospital and we were driving to the centre of Kyiv and a bomb or a rocket fell some metres next to our car,” she recalls.

“I wasn’t scared at all – I don’t know why. It’s like a habit. Somebody started to run, in that moment I was thinking what is the right way..do I stay in the car or leave or I have to continue on our way.

“We decided to go on and only in some hours later, I realised I am really lucky today.”

Olha Oltarzhevska, 22, also mourns for the life she used to live in the capital before war broke out.

Before she would enjoy an active social life in Kyiv, and now she is completing university work in a basement bomb shelter.

“We have to sit in basements and write diplomas now,” she says.

“I don’t leave the house at all. Every day after work before the war, I saw friends or went to the cinema, restaurants, bars, theatres.

“I love my city and my country and the opportunity to be somewhere outside the house, to admire the beauty of our city is a breath of fresh air for me.

“When Facebook sends me an event notification and says, ‘This event happened on this day exactly one year ago’, I envy myself.

“How I went to theatres, with friends to zoos, barbecues, led a social life and developed.”

The scariest thing for Olha and other young people is the future.

It will take decades to rebuild the cities of Ukraine to their former glory.

“To be honest, I don’t even know what to expect from the future,” she says.

“This is probably the scariest thing. It seems to me that many people will move to Kyiv, who have lost their homes in Kharkov and Mariupol. They will try to adapt and live in the capital.

“Of course, the mood is not the same. It is unlikely that we will be able to sing songs, shout for joy walking through the streets, as it was before.

“It is unlikely that we will go to the cinema for comedies in the near future. No one will arrange fireworks for the new year, because it is associated with explosions.

“We have many years of adaptation ahead of us.”

Mum Kateryna Derkach, 34, was thrust into a sudden evacuation that sent her hundreds of miles away from her home in the suburbs of Kyiv.

Sitting in her temporary apartment in the Poltava region, she warily snatches her curtains every so often to take a look outside.

“I’m more or less safe, but I will have to check over the course of this interview if everything is calm, and make sure that I can still talk”, she says.

Before fleeing to safety, Kateryna would spend the night in a cramped bomb shelter with 15 others, including her husband and two small children, aged just four and 11.

“There were lots of people with small kids. It was really tough to stay there.”

“My kids felt really cramped in the shelters because they got used to their rooms, their beds and their toys. My son still cries asking if we can come back home.”

“My eldest son used to go to school, and for a month he was just losing it. He didn’t have access to any tasks or subjects”, says Kateryna.

Like many other Ukrainian citizens, Kateryna and her family find themselves missing even the mundaneness of pre-war life.

“My daily routine has changed dramatically. In Kyiv, I went to work everyday and met with people.”

“We used to chat, network, meet with friends, walk on the street and in the parks together with our friends and kids. My kids used to have training, they used to have school, kindergarten – and everybody was engaged in something”, she says.

But Kateryna’s new village in the Poltava region – the name of which she is too afraid to reveal – presents a stark contrast to the hustle and bustle of her old life in Kyiv.

“Now, we stay in a village. It is very very small.”

“We are staying with my grandparents in a small apartment with just two rooms and are forced to sleep on the floor because there is no other way to accommodate us.

“There are 6 people and a dog in one tiny apartment.

“It is really tough to find a quiet place to work, or a quiet place to sit alone. This is no place for a child to play. There is nothing to enjoy. Outside, there is no place to go, no place to hang out. There is nothing to look at. It has really disrupted my social life. We don’t even have any warm water in everyday usage.”

But she is still quick to acknowledge that she is one of the lucky ones.

“I’m crying every day when I look at pictures and read news about Mariupol, which is now in a humanitarian crisis.

“There are people who are blocked and can’t leave the city. They are dying due to dehydration”, she says.

Kateryna is thankful that even amongst all of the chaos, she is still able to earn money to provide for her family and support the Ukrainian army.

“I’m still working remotely for a US-based software company. I’m very lucky that I have the opportunity to work so I can help our army, our economy and to volunteer. Our CEO has organised daily check-ups to make sure that we are all ok and that we have water to drink and food to eat.”

All of these young Ukrainian women are united in their fear, in their feelings of uncertainty and in their mourning of life before the war.

But they are also united in their resilience.

“Our young people are really strong,” Anastasiia says.

“We have no time for panic. We joined and tried to help. Maybe when the war will finish I will cry everyday because everything which we had in our past.

“But now I have no time to think about it and am just doing something. A lot of young people are doing the same.”

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