Students, faculty, and staff from across the bi-co gathered on Founders Green this past Monday to commemorate the three-year-anniversary of Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine. The vigil took place against the backdrop of President Trump’s drastic shift in the United States’s approach to the war, and as tensions increase between himself and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Organized by Danylo Shudrenko (HC ’26) and Roman Gergun (HC ’28), the commemoration began at 12:30 p.m. Around forty people came to support, a far greater number than the vigil saw last year.
The ceremony began with a moment of silence. Around the group, other students not partaking in the vigil continued to walk across campus, some laughing and chatting loudly. Participants steadied their gaze forward, though, and despite the campus activity, a sense of solemn reflection lay over the crowd.
After a minute or so, Gergun came to the microphone.
“We, as fellow Ukrainians, thank you for gathering here, today, now. As you can imagine, a major conflict, a war in one’s motherland, is a tragedy. It’s a wound that cuts deep, an event that separates life into before and after,” he began.
The war officially began in 2022 after Russia troops crossed over the border into Ukraine, beginning the full-scale invasion of its neighbor. Russian president Vladimir Putin referred to it as a “special military operation.” Since then, 12,605 Ukrainian civilians have been killed, 669 of them children.
Prior to the full-scale invasion, Russia illegally annexed Ukrainian territory Crimea in 2014, causing international outrage.
Despite having widespread support after the onslaught of the war, international aid for Ukraine, especially from the United States, has become increasingly controversial. Just this past month, Trump’s administration, including U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, met with Russian leaders in Saudi Arabia to discuss a possible peace deal without the presence of any Ukrainian representative.
Trump has also taken to his Truth-Social social media platform to criticize Zelenskyy, referring to him as a “dictator” at one point. Zelenskyy was democratically elected to a five-year term in 2019. The 2024 presidential elections were postponed, as the Ukraine’s constitution states that under martial law no elections can take place.
An hour before the vigil at Haverford began, the United States refused to vote on a United Nations resolution that recognized Russia as responsible for the war in Ukraine.
“They [Russia] say their goal is denazification,” Gergun said to the crowd, “yet they are the ones repeating the atrocities committed during Word War II. They say, they want to topple the Ukrainian ‘regime’, yet Ukraine, in contrast to Russia, holds fair, democratic elections, time and time again.”
Gergun began another moment of silence before Shudrenko took to the microphone. Shudrenko, a Haverford junior, has not been back to Ukraine since he left over two and a half years prior.
“For us Ukrainians,” Shudrenko began, “the war is not just unsettling news and personal tragedies – it’s made its way into our daily lives.”
Shudrenko spoke of how his seven-year-old brother was singing war-themed Christmas songs during this past holiday season. He spoke of how that same brother was afraid to be alone for even a moment, as the far too common sounds of missiles and drone strikes were a constant source of fear and anxiety.
He then turned to the losses he experienced throughout the war, tearing up slightly as he discussed the deaths which have taken place in his hometown for the past three years.
“One of my friends was killed by a Russian missile hitting, ironically, the Freedom Square in Kharkiv,” Shudrenko told the crowd. “My friend was just merely the volunteer there and it took three weeks to clean up the destruction to find her body under the rubble.”
Soon, the two speakers turned to the recent diplomatic changes enacted under Trump’s administration, and the numerous false claims made by Trump himself on the history and state of the war.
“The current US administration does not seem to side with Ukraine and its people, providing absolutely incorrect arguments not to support Ukraine fully,” Gergun told the crowd.
Gergun and Shudrenko spoke specifically on the claim that Ukraine began the war; one which has been repeated by Trump himself. They said it was one of the most “unsettling” claims they had heard in regards to the war, citing the multiple instances of failed ceasefire deals which Putin has broken in the past decade.
Shudrenko ended the vigil with a strong call of action for those in attendance.
“Today, Ukraine is the only barrier between the terrorist Russia and the rest of the Western World,” he began, “if Ukraine falls, Russia will not stop, as it didn’t stop after colonizing Chechnya and the part of Georgia. The war in Ukraine is not over, and, unfortunately, Ukraine is not doing as good right now. We critically need support on all levels, from spreading information around to donating to Ukrainian organizations to providing military support as soon as possible. Ukraine will prevail, but we need your help, and I encourage you to stand against the pro-Russian policies of the current administration and push them to support Ukraine fully.”
In the days since the vigil, relations between the United States and Ukraine have continued to sour.
In an extraordinary press conference yesterday afternoon, President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance’s conversation with President Zelenskyy devolved into a shouting match. Trump and Vance berated the Ukrainian leader, claiming he was “ungrateful” for the aid the United States had supplied.
The blowout began after Zelenskyy requested security assurances along with a rare-mineral deal that would have given the United States a significant economic hold in the country, and which now appears to have fallen apart. Zelenskyy stated that simply signing a ceasefire deal with Putin would not be sufficient to prevent him from starting another war in the future.
It is clear that, at least for now, the United States is no longer a reliable partner or ally to Ukraine. As Trump continues to express sympathy for the Russian leader, who has been accused of a plethora of war crimes in various nations as well as rigging elections and political suppression, Ukraine has turned to Europe for support. The result is an increasingly isolating global atmosphere for the United States, where the nation is positioned for the first time in opposition to its NATO alliances.
Still, small acts of solidarity seem to offer, at least on the Bi-College Campuses, a sense of hope and union in the midst of abrupt diplomatic change.
