People walk past a monument comprised of a Soviet-era tank outfitted with a Ukrainian flag in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 24.EMILE DUCKE/The New York Times News Service
This is part of a Globe and Mail series marking the anniversary of Russia’s invasion, in which authors from Ukraine, Canada and beyond imagine what could come next.
Natalie Slyusar was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, where she still lived with her husband and son before the war. Now in Kyiv, she runs an online jewellery business and is writing a novel.
In the past year, we’ve gotten used to the sounds of sirens and bombs exploding. We’ve tried to live an almost normal life: work (though making money became a hundred times harder), buy food and cook it without electricity, walk our dogs in the unlit streets, invite friends for coffee, laugh and love.
I’m also still doing something that might sound impossible: making long-term plans.
Planning something in a country where swarms of Russian rockets can appear any time, at any place, feels impractical, and maybe even silly. But I’ve chosen this life and haven’t left the country for a reason: to get a good in-person education for my son, Yaroslav, in his last year at high school. We experienced online school during the pandemic, and we know for sure it’s not an option for us.
Last summer, we moved to Kyiv looking for a good school with a shelter and a first-class level of education, especially in English and math, just as we had before the war in Kharkiv. Our gifted, clever kid dreamed of working at international organizations after graduating from university. Now, he wants to restore his motherland, but he still keeps his greatest desire – to pursue a law degree at an Ivy League university.
It hasn’t always been easy. I clearly remember the morning of Oct. 10, when my son had left already for school and a wave of rocket attacks woke me. I learned on social media that they had hit the centre of Kyiv right when my son waits there for a bus to the subway – and that a second wave of rockets was coming.
I called him in a panic: “Where are you?”
“In the school basement,” he calmly replied.
“Have you heard the siren and explosions?”
“Yes, everybody fled from the bus stop.”
“You should have come home!”
“But I needed to go to school,” he insisted. “Don’t worry, the explosions were quite far away.”
That day, he spent four of six lessons in the school’s basement. “We even did a math test there!” he told me after returning home.
While it seems to be madness, I think we made the right choice.
Not one of Yaroslav’s classmates who left Ukraine last spring could study at a good school abroad. And most Ukrainian children at schools in Germany, Poland or France come home after class and continue online lessons at their Ukrainian school.
Can you imagine trigonometry or chemistry taught in an unknown language?
Spring is coming, which raises a huge problem for high-school graduates. A military career seems to be the simplest in this country, but what should future lawyers, engineers and doctors do? The war has paralyzed almost all colleges and universities. Their laboratories are empty and campuses destroyed. A lot of students and teachers were killed or emigrated.
The catastrophe caused by Vladimir Putin’s evil war against Ukraine is like an iceberg that hides underwater many problems. Disrupted education is one of the most important, and solving that is connected to the future renovation of the country.
If this spring will not bring us victory, hundreds of students will have to enter half-dead Ukrainian universities or apply abroad. Do you know what a Ukrainian mother does on a free evening? She searches for scholarships in foreign countries where a 17-year-old can study at university in English. Believe me, it’s not an easy challenge. But do you think those who stayed here are afraid of challenges?
See, despite everything, I stubbornly make plans. I can’t predict how this war will end. But even if Russia leaves our borders, that doesn’t mean they are forever defeated. Such a neighbour is always a threat, and only further development of Ukraine and our Ukrainian children can guarantee that a new war will not resume in five or 10 years.
Yaroslav goes to one of the best schools in this country. It has highly professional teachers, a shelter, WiFi and a generator. He is an A student, and I am proud of him and the other children who wake up every morning and go to school, hide in the shelter two to three times a day when the siren sounds, and then return to class and go on learning.
In the evenings, these children do their homework using lamps charged by USBs and tablets working from power banks. These children are my heroes, the hope for this country, and my son is among them.