For many people in Nijmegen, war feels like something distant and abstract. But not for student Yurii Baranenko (21). He fled from Ukraine and organizes fundraising campaigns for his homeland, for example by running the Amsterdam Marathon.

Around four in the morning, I woke up to a loud noise. At first, I thought it was fireworks, but then I realized it was a strange time for that. More explosions followed, and lights came on in houses along our street. Within minutes, Telegram was flooded with messages. On February 24, 2022, the Russians were bombing my city, Kharkiv.

Supermarkets quickly ran out of everything. We had to stand in long lines just to buy whatever was left. One day, while I was waiting in line, a bomb hit a house behind the store. Still, no one moved—our need for food was greater than our fear. The only product still fully stocked on the shelves was a cheese called ‘Russian cheese.’ No one wanted to buy it.

Survival

In the first weeks after the invasion, no one was thinking about school or work—we were too busy trying to survive. That changed when my mother and I arrived in Middelburg. We thought we would stay for just a month, but when it turned out to be much longer, I enrolled at University College Roosevelt.

While living in Zeeland, I organized several fundraising initiatives for Ukraine. I ran the Amsterdam Marathon and hosted film nights, raising a total of eight thousand euros. With that money, we were able to fund prosthetics for injured soldiers. Even from a distance, I can still help my country.

In Kharkiv, I studied economics, but in the Netherlands I switched to law because of the strong sense of injustice the war left me with. My mother returned to Kharkiv after six months. Many buildings around our apartment have been destroyed, but fortunately our home is still standing.

‘I haven’t seen my father in four years. Hopefully, he will be able to visit the Netherlands this summer’

I haven’t seen my father in four years. Hopefully, he will be able to visit the Netherlands this summer. My mother comes here regularly. We know we live in very different realities, but we try to understand each other as best we can.

At first, I would still panic at the sound of a plane flying overhead, but that has passed. When I walk with my mother in a Dutch park and she sees crows flying, she says how comforting it is to simply watch them—without thinking they may have just fed on decomposing bodies somewhere on a battlefield.

In Kharkiv, there are often long periods without water or electricity. My mother recently told me that our cat suffers most from the cold. His name is Veniamin, and he is thirteen years old. She bought him an electric blanket.