Diana Yuzuik stands in entrance of scholars' notes protesting Russia's invasion of Ukraine, at St. George Academy, a Ukrainian Catholic-affiliated highschool within the East Village. Like Maksym Kosar (prime left) and Marta Slaba (backside left), she is one among a handful of Ukraine refugees now enrolled at St. George Academy in Manhattan's East Village.
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Diana Yuzuik has been watching and ready for Russian troopers to invade her residence within the village of Rivine in western Ukraine, glued to a safety feed that sends video to her cellphone.
Whereas her village has not seen the bloody fight of Kyiv or southern Ukraine, it has absorbed lengthy vary shelling, and Yuzuik witnessed a current assault by Russian missiles that she later discovered killed 19 civilians.
However the 15-year-old is watching every little thing from the protection of New York Metropolis, the place she is staying together with her grandmother.
“They all the time come at night time,” she stated of the Russian missiles which have rained terror on her residence metropolis.
Yuzuik is one among a handful of teenagers from the war-torn nation who've lately landed at St. George Academy, a highschool in Manhattan’s East Village related to the Ukrainian Catholic Church of the identical identify.
Principal Andrew Stasiw stated on Tuesday morning that he had simply admitted his fifth Ukrainian refugee because the Russian invasion of that nation started on Feb. 24.
“We’re a boutique prep faculty, however we're taking in as many as we will,” he stated.
Among the many new college students is Maksym Kosar, a 17-year-old from Irano Frankivsk, some 325 miles from Kyiv. Within the run-up to the warfare, Maksym had a backpack full of essential paperwork, a passport, medical provides and bottled water. The day the warfare started on Feb. 24, “My father informed me Russian missiles had hit the airport close to us,” the teenager recalled. “He stated, ‘I'm taking you to Poland.'”
His father had sufficient fuel within the automotive to drive to the border the place Kosar, a high-school junior, was dropped off alone. His mom, Viktorria, was already in the USA, having lived right here since splitting from her husband seven years in the past. His father, a manufacturing supervisor at a manufacturing unit, is now “within the territorial protection power if wanted.
“I’ll be right here till the warfare ends,” Kosar stated.
Yuzuik, a tenth-grader, was visiting her grandmother in New York when the warfare broke out. She has stayed in contact together with her hometown classmates.
“They're very afraid,” Yuzuik stated. “Each time the sirens go off they've to move to the bunkers. They go off six instances an evening.”
Marta Slaba is from Lviv, the second largest metropolis in Ukraine, which has come below heavy shelling by Russians in current days. She left together with her mom after warfare broke out, however her father stayed behind to hitch the resistance. “He’s very cussed,” stated the 13-year-old ninth-grader.
Principal Stansiw stated he expects the trickle of Ukranian college students to extend within the weeks and months forward.
The warfare has put a particular emotional stress on the college, the place 40 p.c of the 100 or so college students had been born in Ukraine and many of the remainder of have sturdy ties to their homeland, as both first or second technology Ukrainian-People. Stasiw stated some college students miss class as a result of they've been up all night time monitoring occasions of their embattled homeland. One pupil from Kyiv, he stated, cries daily.
It’s touched the household of Stasiw as effectively. His dad and mom are each Ukrainian-born, and he stated that his cousin Anna Stasiw spent days in a bunker in Kyiv together with her nine-year-old son, Artur, “scared to loss of life” as Vladimir Putin despatched almost 200,000 troops throughout the the japanese border and commenced shelling the capitol metropolis. Anna and Artur ultimately made their method to Poland whereas her husband stayed behind to battle.
“Folks say they're fearful about beginning World Warfare III, nevertheless it’s already taking place,” Stasiw stated. “The resistance fighters should not simply saving Ukraine, they're saving Europe. Putin won't cease with Ukraine.”
He admitted that he needs Putin’s personal individuals would “take him out … what is occurring now's genocide.”
Towards the hustle and bustle of a standard faculty day — finding out science, math or social research and making ready for Regents exams — the warfare isn't removed from the ideas of the scholars or school.
A mural within the faculty’s hallway is roofed with indicators made by the scholars earlier than the latest 5 arrived. “Cease Putin, Cease Warfare,” reads one. “Ukraine Will Resist!” “Shelter Our Sky/We Will Deal with the Relaxation.” “In the present day Ukraine is Saving the World!” Some are written in Ukraine.
“They're all good college students,” Stasiw stated of the brand new enrollees. “However they fear they might by no means see their family members again residence once more.”
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