As conflict continues, youth rethink futures
KYIV, Ukraine — For at least one night, they thought, they would use the basement of the university building not as a bomb shelter but as a place to dance — to celebrate their Ukrainian heritage, to be young.
“They have forgotten normal life,” said Valerii Valiiev, an 18-year-old who managed a molotov cocktail factory during Russia’s assault on the capital but on the evening of the students’ exuberant gathering was helping to sell entrance tickets. “Dancing … will be very good.”
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the country’s young people have been at the forefront of both its resistance and its trauma. Some fled their homes or were separated from their families. Others volunteered or deployed to the front line. Many lost relatives, friends or neighbors. All are grappling with how the war has forced them to grow up, altered their lives, reordered their priorities and derailed their dreams.
The proceeds from the student dance were headed straight to the front line — to support the battalion of 18-year-old Sviatoslav Syrotyuk’s father, who was battling Russian forces. Syrotyuk fought alongside his dad early this year after joining the territorial defense and deploying in and around Kyiv. The experience turned him from a first-year college student majoring in archaeology into a soldier risking his life for Ukraine.
Positioned in a trench preparing for the Russian attack last February, the teenager didn’t have “any fear”; he had trained since he was a young boy to handle weapons and was teaching other recruits how to shoot. Yet in the weeks that followed, he got a crash course in war. He saw bullets whiz right past him. He helped evacuate civilians from a front-line town and suffered a concussion when a shell exploded next to them.
After Russian forces finally pulled back from the capital in April, his father opted to deploy again but encouraged him to stay back and pursue his studies. He “understands that I am a person who in the future will build our country,” Syrotyuk said.
Valiiev, a law student and close friend, has encountered the war far differently. When it began, his mother asked him to come stay in the small village where she and his 5-year-old brother lived near Bucha and where she hoped her older son would be safer. He said no, deciding he needed to support Ukrainian forces from Kyiv.
He soon lost all contact with his family and feared his mother and brother were dead. Not until the Russians retreated did he learn otherwise. His mother got a call through to say that while the village had been occupied, both she and his brother survived.
“I didn’t believe it at first,” he said. “I cannot describe this moment. It was very, very emotional. I was just shocked.”
Valiiev’s priorities and values have shifted, he acknowledges: “Back in the day, I was wondering about something bigger — a big salary, big material things. Now, I think it just doesn’t matter.” What does matter: “The possibility to just live a normal life.”