On Feb. 24, the Vassar Alliance for Ukraine hosted “Tribute to Ukraine: Childhoods During the War” in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center. The event marked the four year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Students, faculty and community members gathered to listen and reflect on the impacts of the Russo-Ukrainian War, sharing their personal experiences and connections to the conflict. The Office of International Services and Office of Religious and Spiritual Life and Contemplative Practices helped organize the event, which included speeches given by several student leaders within the Vassar Alliance for Ukraine, and concluded with a candlelight vigil led by Associate Dean for Religious and Spiritual Life and Contemplative Practices Reverend Callista Isabelle.
Along the entrance of the Loeb were photographs of disabled Ukrainian veterans, refugees fleeing their homes and soldiers marching to battle. These images, as well as captions describing the political, historical and social circumstances of the war, were prominently displayed for attendees.
The event primarily centered around the kidnapping and indoctrination of Ukrainian children. Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Russian government has engaged in a state-organized campaign to forcibly capture, deport and re-educate Ukrainian children, which the United Nations recognizes as a violation of international law. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s initiative Bring Back Kids UA, Russia maintains control over 1.6 million Ukrainian children. The Yale University School of Public Health has documented Russia’s system of “re-education” camps designed to make Ukrainian children more pro-Russian.
Vassar Alliance for Ukraine President Karolina Naidon ’26 opened the event by discussing her personal experience as a Ukrainian refugee. She shared, “When the full-scale invasion started, I was still a 17-year-old kid, and three days afterward, officially became an adult.” Naidon continued, “This allowed me to evacuate from my homeland on my own.” The Russian invasion of Ukraine forced seven million Ukrainians like Naidon to flee their country—two million of which were children. Since the initial invasion, the number of internally and external displaced refugees has grown to over 14 million.
Naidon also spoke about the impact of Russia’s military tactics on Ukrainian children, namely Russian attacks on residential areas and educational institutions which inordinately target children: “Russian missiles do not simply kill children and teenagers. They murder someone’s child or grandson, someone’s best friend, or someone’s student…and that is a strategic choice of Russians. They continuously try to wipe out not only Ukraine as a state, but also Ukraine’s future in the face of these children.”
After Naidon, Director of International Services and the Assistant Dean of Student Growth and Engagement Andrew Meade discussed the current diplomatic and political fight for Ukrainian independence, as well as the importance of offering solidarity to the Ukrainian people. He quoted Zelenskyy from a recent meeting of the European Union parliament: “The security of Ukraine is the security of Europe, the freedom of Ukraine is the freedom of Europe and the future of Ukraine lies in Europe.” Meade then told the audience, “Consider all the things you enjoyed doing as a child. Now imagine living without heat, electricity and water when outside temperatures are below zero Fahrenheit, and your stuffed animals are being used as insulation, and your reality includes a thousand hours of air raids every year.”
Ukrainian Women’s Organizations and Honorary President of the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America Marianna Zajac, the special guest speaker for the evening, spoke about the systematic deportation and forced transfer of Ukrainian children into Russia. She described how Ukrainian children are taken from their homes, provided with Russian citizenship and placed in camps for ideological and political re-education and adopted into Russian families. Zajac explained, “It is a formal charge under international law. Under the Genocide Convention, the forcible transfer of children from one national group to another is explicitly recognized as an act of genocide.”
Zajac emphasized that most of the children who are taken are told their parents do not want them, that their language is backwards and their country does not exist. “This is psychological warfare,” Zajac warned. “It attempts to sever cultural community and continuity, to break lineage, to disrupt the transmission of language, of memory or belonging… The crime is not only the physical removal. It is an attempted erasure of identity.”
Vassar Alliance for Ukraine Treasurer Mary Lemza ’27 and First Year Representative Isabel Zhuravel ’29 spoke about their experiences as Ukrainian refugees. Lemza, a former resident of Kyiv, discussed how unrecognizable her home has become as a result of the war. “I realized maybe it wasn’t normal to be woken up by an air raid alert three times in one night…for the streets to constantly smell like gasoline and to laugh at jokes about having to start a fire indoors because there’s no electricity and heat and water.”
Zhuravel said she feels fortunate that her family lives in a less violent area of Ukraine, but remains deeply concerned. She explained, “Occasionally, the heating is turned off, which can cause great problems during the winter, especially among the elders in my family.” More importantly, Zhuravel continued, “I feel worried for my family…because of the proximity to Russia and its aggression. It causes great stress among my family for the future of our country.”
Naidon explained to TheMiscellany News why she chose to make Ukrainian children the focus of the event: “When talking about war, it is very easy to look over statistics, but those children are not just numbers. This is the future of Ukraine that Russia brutally erases daily.” Naidon also encouraged those interested in helping support the Vassar Alliance for Ukraine to sign up for their newsletter, through which students can volunteer and attend fundraising and awareness events. Finally, when asked what message she hoped to leave Vassar students with, Naidon concluded: “Despite Russian invasion, continuous missile strikes and attempts to demoralize the population, Ukraine still stands strong… They did not manage to break the spirit of my nation, and people still continue to fight for their freedom and independence.”