FROM:
Derek Soong | STAFF WRITER
TO: Foreign support, the Russia-Ukraine war and a stolen normal life SUBJECT: Re: Centering Ukrainian voices and documenting war in her backyard
Julia Tymoshenko, a 2021 graduate of NYU Abu Dhabi, uses Instagram to broadcast the day-to-day reality of civilian life during the Russia-Ukraine war.
IMAGE COURTESY OF JULIA TYMOSHENKO
When Julia Tymoshenko graduated f rom NYU Abu Dhabi in 2021, she looked forward to beginning her post-college life back in Ukraine. Now, after less than a year of living in Kyiv, the Russian invasion has forced Tymoshenko and millions of others to flee in search of refuge. By sharing her departure and experience on social media, she has gained thousands of followers while continuing to document the tragedy. “When we all woke up on Feb. 24, around 5 a.m., I think everybody realized that this was actually happening,” Tymoshenko said. “I woke up and heard the explosions and realized that this was it … I escaped f rom [the capital] on [the] train, together with my mom and some f riends. And right now we’re renting an apartment in Lviv.” While many fled the country, Tymoshenko stayed within Ukrainian borders, opting to move to the western city of Lviv. She explained that leaving the country altogether was not a decision she was willing to make. “Fleeing my city already felt like a betrayal,” she wrote via Instagram direct message. “I can’t imagine what it would be [like] to leave my country. As a person who loves to travel and explore, I realized that I only love to do it when it’s my choice, not when occupants are coming and forcing me to get out.” In Tymoshenko’s March 8 Instagram post, red flames engulfed the sky-blue St. George chapel near where Tymoshenko’s grandparents live, as the church joined a growing list of historic buildings destroyed by the war. Growing up in Zavorychi, a village east of Kyiv, Tymoshenko remembers seeing the chapel every day f rom her grandparents’ yard. She reminisced on
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the chapel’s beautiful fairy-light decorations during the Christmas season. An old photo of Tymoshenko standing in f ront of the chapel, which was burned to ashes by Russian shelling, is now just a memory. “I spent a lot of time growing up just playing in f ront of [the chapel] and actually being f riends with the priest’s son and priest’s kids,” Tymoshenko said. “[My grandma] always said that she lives in a holy place just because she’s right by the church. And I sort of always laughed at that, like I didn’t take it seriously. I knew that she was there to see it burn completely to ashes, and I just don’t know how she felt. She probably felt absolutely terrible, because it has been an even bigger symbol and of a bigger signif icance to her.” During the attack that destroyed the chapel, Tymoshenko’s grandfather was shot at but survived. The war had reached home for her. “Everything that is left alive in me burns,” she wrote in the Instagram post caption. Watching the looming threat of war in Ukraine earlier this year, Tymoshenko’s NYU Abu Dhabi classmates came to her seeking resources about the Russia-Ukraine conflict. At the time, Tymoshenko said she could not f ind reliable public resources to point them toward. She said the dearth of Ukrainian voices in Western media, combined with sparse shareable resources, prompted her to upload a carousel post to Instagram on the political situation in January. “It sort of picked up among both foreigners and Ukrainians,” Tymoshenko said. “And that’s when I started getting a lot of of Instagram followers f rom abroad. The number of followers increased dramatically — I think like in two days I got 10k more. And so many people were texting me.” While Tymoshenko enjoys using social media as a platform to spread information on issues like LGBTQ+ rights and feminism in Ukraine, her current focus is updating her audience on the day-to-day realities of the Russian invasion and sharing memories of Ukrainian life before the war. “I was just living a normal life as one does. I was going to work [in] this beautiful co-working space,” she wrote via Instagram DM. “I rented an apartment with another NYUAD alumna. The life was so wholesome. I was looking forward for a concert in March actually.” Tymoshenko believes the battle for Ukrainians isn’t just on the ground in Ukraine. Even while at NYU, an institution that prides itself for being a global university, she felt misrepresented and experienced erasure of her Eastern European culture. “Once in NYU Abu Dhabi, we’ve had the case when our dining hall was actually trying to do the
