HANOVER — Russia’s violent invasion of Ukraine may seem far removed from most people in the Upper Valley, a distant reality gleaned from the safety of their news feeds.
But for a brief hour Wednesday, students and teachers at Hanover High School got a both a geopolitical briefing and glimpse of the horror of the war unleashed by Russian President Vladimir Putin through the personal stories of three people — two of them Dartmouth College students only a year or two out of high school themselves — who all have deep ties to Ukraine.
Yevheniia Dubrova and Marta Hulievska, two Ukrainian students who are undergraduates at Dartmouth, and Yuliya Ballou, who grew up in Russia and now teaches German and Russian at Hanover High, came together on Wednesday in social studies teacher Jon Gentine’s classroom to talk with his students about how the war impacts them pesonally.
The easy flow of information about the war in Ukraine is being choked off in Russia, said Ballou, so that even some of her friends back in Russia do not believe what they are being told by family members in Ukraine and are accepting Russia’s version of the invasion as a “special military operation.”
“I had to stop talking to most of my friends in Russia except for very few,” Ballou said. “My auntie’s husband is Russian. They tried to explain (to his family), ‘We’re calling you between being shelled, not by Ukrainians, by Russians.’ They wouldn’t believe them. They couldn’t take it. My own friends, educated and smart, have eaten up this propaganda.”
Ukrainians, even the ones who were not supporters of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, are rallying around their leader as he has demonstrated rare courage and bravery in the face of an enemy much bigger and more powerful.
“I was one of the people opposed very much to Zelenskyy in the beginning,” said Dubrova, a sophomore studying creative writing and media at Dartmouth who is from the Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, one of the Russian-speaking regions that is under the control of Moscow-backed separatists but which she said identifies as Ukrainian.
“You can say a lot of things about him being a president in normal pre-war times, but he’s proven himself to be a great war leader right now,” Dubrova said of the comedian-turned-politician. “His speeches have inspired people so much that they united Ukraine. He has more than 90% approval. It says a lot about personality in history, too.”
Hulievska, a freshman who also plans to major in creative writing, explained that Ukraine in many ways has “two different mentalities” — the eastern portion, which historically came under the influence of the Russian empire, and the western portion, which was more influenced by Polish empire and the Austro-Hungarian empire.
“There’s significant differences in ethnicities and languages,” Hulievska said.
“All of that is not important now,” said Hulievska, who is from the city of Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine, home of the largest nuclear power station in Europe, which was attacked and set ablaze in the early days of the invasion. “Everyone in my family who did not support Zelenskyy before supports him now.”
A galvanizing moment came when Zelenskyy spurned a U.S. offer to evacuate him from Kyiv, with the now-famous line, “I need ammunition, not a ride,” which Hulievska draws a sharp distinction between the Zelenskyy and Putin. He has also survived assassination attempts, she noted.
“That was very empowering,” Hulievska related, “because what we see about Putin right now is that he’s hiding in the bunker because he is scared for his life. … (Zelenskyy is) not trying to hide.”
Although Hulievska said the women in her family have relocated to western Ukraine, her father is still at home because all Ukrainian men ages 18 to 60 were ordered to stay in place in case they are called up to fight.
“He’s 57 with three kids,” Hulievska said. “My family tells me not be afraid or nervous. But I am afraid and nervous every minute of the day right now.”
Asked by one of the adults in the room what ordinary Americans can do to aid the Ukrainians, all three of the speakers said donating money to one of the international or Ukrainian aid organizations would be a big help.
Pointedly, however, Hulievska recommended not booking an Airbnb lodging in Ukraine, as some Americans are doing, in order to financially support the host with a source of income.
While heartfelt, the money is better spent elsewhere because “the landlords are not in the most disadvantageous positions right now,” she said.
Instead, Dubrova urged the audience to write lawmakers and urge them to enact a law that would allow for expedited emergency visas for displaced Ukrainian refugees to enter the country.
“There is no law that would allow refugees to come here on an emergency visa. There is no way I can bring my little sister here to live with me,” Dubrova said.
“Poland should not be carrying the brunt of it all. Other countries need to help out,” Ballou added. “We’re a big country and can manage to help out quite a few refugees.”
Hulievska also called upon the audience to write lawmakers urging them to push for a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which President Joe Biden and NATO so far have not done out of fear it would lead to U.S. and NATO forces directly entering the war.
“I remember talking to my dad and saying, ‘We’re going to last a couple of days,’ ” Hulievska said about how she predicted the Ukrainian army would hold up against the Russian forces. “But here we are two weeks later. We are winning the battle on the ground, which was unimaginable, but we cannot win the battle the sky. This is the big thing we are trying to push for, to get the Americans and NATO to close the sky.”
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
