‘We just want to be safe’: Faculty, students at Wisconsin-affiliated university in Kyiv describe an intensifying invasion

Every day Yuliya Morozova hears the sounds of missiles overhead. She lives with her family in Brovary, Ukraine, about 15 kilometers east of Kyiv. For the past week, they’ve been running into their basement anytime their phones ding with an emergency alert.

“Usually it’s happening at night so you just wake up shaking and running,” Morozova said.

And she feels lucky, relatively speaking. With Russian forces invading Kyiv from the west, they haven’t advanced into her city yet. But she has friends and colleagues that can see tanks from their windows. Many people don’t have internet, electricity or food.

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Morozova recently graduated from the Ukrainian-American Concordia University in Kyiv, which is partnered with Wisconsin’s Concordia University in Mequon.

With attacks worsening, their nearly 600 students and 60 faculty and staff are scattered across Europe. Some have already fled Ukraine, while others are hunkering down in bomb shelters in and around Kyiv.

“Everything is a complete mess,” said Dr. Julia Romanovska, vice rector and co-founder of Ukrainian-American Concordia University at a virtual press conference on Tuesday.

The university is in downtown Kyiv and so far the building is safe, but Romanovska said they couldn’t guarantee the safety of their students, faculty and staff so they have canceled classes for at least a few weeks.

“Human lives are more important than buildings,” she said.

The university is trying to stay in touch with students but it has been difficult without guaranteed access to cell service, internet or even electricity. Right now, she said the school’s Facebook page is their best source of information. On Tuesday, Russian forces attacked Kyiv’s main radio and TV tower, forcing stations off the air.

Paul Tomas is an American citizen who is on the school’s advisory board and is an honorary professor of economics and finance. He lives in the suburbs just south of Kyiv and is still there. He remembers waking up at 4 a.m. Thursday to the sound of missile strikes near the airport. Since then, nothing has been the same.

“The level of violence and destruction is truly barbaric,” Thomas said. “It’s impossible to operate any kind of education when you’re literally under vicious and unrelenting, indiscriminate bombing that’s going on right now.“

Still, Thomas said he can’t help but think about the future of his students. That’s his job as an educator. In the 25 years he has worked in Ukraine, he said he has watched the country grow economically, socially and politically, establishing an identity independent of Russia. And he said his students will be the next leaders of this new Ukraine.

“We have to hope that their physical lives and psychological lives will be preserved today and in the short term while this barbarism plays out. But we also have to trust in good triumphing over evil and look forward to how … we help students reconnect with their education and their goals,” Thomas said.

Right now, Thomas said they are just focused on surviving. But he is already reaching out to other universities — including Concordia University Wisconsin — to ask for help. His hope is that other institutions can host their students and give them a chance to finish their semester and avoid falling behind in their studies. When the violence ends, he said he wants to be ready to help put the pieces of their lives back together.

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Yulia Sobkova is another alumna of the university, who graduated a few years ago. She is from Kyiv, but right now she is staying with her grandmother in western Ukraine. Her family chose to split up to make sure no one was alone.

“That was very hard because I couldn’t be sure whether they will be safe or not, whether I will be safe or not, and how far the situation will go and escalate,” Sobkova said.

But she said all her tears were shed in the first few days. Now she is trying to stay strong, looking forward and looking for ways to help. She prepares food for the community and searches medical facilities for essential supplies like insulin. She is also working with friends — some in Russia — to spread accurate information about the war to counter Russian propaganda.

“This is something that we are proud of because that’s who are Ukrainian people. We are people who can, in the toughest times, just unite and help everyone with anything we can,” Sobkova said. “Each of my friends would give the last piece of bread to the person that is next to him.”

Sobkova said that if she focused on civilian casualties or the women forced to give birth in bomb shelters, she would be emotionally destroyed. Instead, she and others choose to focus on what they can do for each other.

“We do feel scared. We do feel angry. We feel nervous. We feel miserable, but at the same time we feel pretty united, pretty tough, pretty proud of what we’re going through and how we are going through it,” she said. “And if this is not an example of what an independency looks like, I don’t know what is.”