In the early hours of Feb. 24, 2022, economics senior Natalya Kolomiyets woke up to the sound of explosions echoing through her hometown of Kharkiv, Ukraine. 

The things she’d been looking forward to — a nail appointment, university classes and her 18th birthday party — all would have to wait. 

“We just packed our little backpacks with first aid kits, underwear, protein bars, and we left,” Kolomiyets said. “I’ve never been home since.”

Three hundred miles west in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, graduate student Julia Deka found herself piled into her dad’s car along with five other residents and someone’s cat, all fleeing the city as Russia invaded from the east.

“There were tens of thousands of cars on the roads,” Deka said. “And when we were leaving, they already closed the entrance to Kyiv, so you could see you can’t enter Kyiv anymore. So only Ukrainian tanks were driving to Kyiv to defend the city. And that was the first time I ever saw a tank in my life.”

Over the three years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, both Kolomiyets and Deka found their way to Texas A&M: Kolomiyets at the end of a refugee journey that took her to Hungary and Germany, and Deka as an applicant to the Bush School after finishing her studies in Ukraine. 

“I chose the Bush School because I like the idea that it was focused very much on practice,” Deka said. “I want to work in international affairs here and help Ukraine move into the Euro-Atlantic integration, and I felt like the Bush School was the right place for me.”

But even thousands of miles away in Aggieland, both Kolomiyets and Deka aren’t ready to give up the fight for their nation and culture. Enter A&M’s Ukrainian Club, founded in 2023 near the first anniversary of the invasion.

“It’s our job as citizens and Ukrainians to explain what’s happening and tell that we need this support still,” Kolomiyets said. “Because otherwise, how would people know? It really is our job to tell people, ‘Oh, see, this is what’s happening. That’s why it’s happening.’ … I wouldn’t say we’re happy to talk about the war, but we’re happy to provide information and let people know what’s actually happening.”

Far from the homefront

Over its two years of existence, the Ukrainian Club has hosted a variety of events to support humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. They’ve packed trauma kits with the help of local nonprofit Elevate Ukraine. They’ve hosted documentary screenings and cultural performances designed to educate students about Ukrainian Culture. They’ve even worked hand-in-hand with charities abroad, like United Hearts Ukraine and Litokryl Now, an emotional support center for children based in Kharhiv.

“We are so grateful and privileged to be studying here and to get our degrees because unfortunately, there are a lot of students in Ukraine who never had this option at all because Russia killed them,” Kolimiyets, the club’s president, said. “We want to continue doing what we are doing and raising [money], helping, just continue supporting Ukraine. Because we’re right now in safety, and it’s just like what we have to do and what we want to do, of course.”

As a refugee, Kolomiyets remembers the outpouring of support the Ukrainian cause received across Europe and the United States after the invasion — including at A&M.

“When I got accepted, I started researching Texas A&M,” Kolomiyets said. “ … People got together and people showed that they stand with Ukraine and that they stand with democracy. They stand with independence. So when I saw this on the official Texas A&M Instagram page, it really did warm my heart because I was like, ‘OK, people stand with Ukraine. We matter.’”

After three long years, some Aggies seem to have no idea the struggle is still ongoing. 

“Because Ukraine is no longer the top column in the news, people tend to think that the war is over,” Kolomiyets said. “So when we would do a bake sale in the MSC, a bunch of people would stop by and be like, ‘Oh, is the war still going?’ Because it stopped being shown in the media that much, people just moved on.”

But things are a little different at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, according to Deka. In classes filled with discussions of politics and international affairs, Ukraine comes up quite a bit.

Deka uses her unique experience to bring something new to the conversation.

“My major also allows me to bring Ukraine into discussions whenever I have a chance,” Deka said. “Do presentations on Ukraine, or write policy papers on the Russia-Ukraine War, and posting what I notice on social media, just like different stories. News also helps a lot to raise awareness because nobody voluntarily goes to the news website and looks up, ‘Russia attack today in Ukraine,’ right? So that really helps.”

That’s not to say the club doesn’t feel supported by students. But three years of war can be exhausting.

“Everyone is, the majority of the time, super supportive,” Kolomiyets said. “It’s like, ‘Oh, we pray for you guys.’ I would say people moved on from this, and I do understand that it’s tiring to think about it, maybe all the time, but I would also say no one is more tired of this war than Ukrainians are. Our main goal is to finish it and end it as soon as possible. And that’s what we’re working on all together.”

‘My soul is back home’

Both Deka and Kolomiyets are grateful for their time in Aggieland. Kolomiyets, a beneficiary of the A&M System’s free tuition grant to Ukrainian students, said A&M has given her a “second chance to live.”

That doesn’t mean the war hasn’t taken its toll.

“You just exist, you don’t live,” Kolomiyets said. “I don’t know how to explain that. Even being here, I would wake up, and the first thing I would do, I would go and check the news. I would scroll all my news feed to see, ‘Is my family OK? Are they alive?’ You just randomly started wondering those things, you don’t really care much about anything else.”

As the political situation heads towards a possible resolution, Deka said the focus must be on supporting Ukraine rather than appeasing Russia.

“At the Bush School, we have a lot of discussions right now going on about the end of the war and what the Trump administration is trying to do and so on,” Deka said. “And I feel like there is too much focus on what we can give Russia, how can Russia benefit from taking part in negotiations and stuff. That really outrages me because we are shifting. We have to think about how to preserve Ukrainian sovereignty.”

And as the club rallies support for Ukraine among A&M students thousands of miles from the conflict, there’s a part of the struggle that Kolomiyets said is impossible for others who haven’t been affected by war to understand.

“I’m trying to live here, but my heart, my soul is back home,” Kolomiyets said. “It is how it is, unfortunately. It feels like this wound would never fully heal, at this point. It just is gonna be like this, at least as long as the war is still going on.”