B ack in Ukraine, during the first weeks of the war, Marko began thinking of leaving. “I couldn’t volunteer anymore, I had to stay a long time taking antibiotics and I started losing hope especially after that bomb hit and I decided ‘what am I going to do?’,” he said. Russian missiles flew over western Ukraine and hit various military sites around Lviv, one of the targeted sites was a few miles from Marko’s apartment and billows of smoke became his view outside of his window. During this raid, Marko’s distant relative was killed in Yavoriv, a town ten miles from the Polish border, training to join the military. “Some would put themselves in a baby box to get into Poland and they couldn’t. This was not an option,” Marko said. The idea of leaving the country to continue his studies had grown in his mind as the war got closer. “My parents told me that ‘Marko, if you give up on your studies, what is the future of Ukraine? Why did you study so hard in high school? Why would you give up everything? Why would you join the army when you could restore Ukraine in the future? The future is what matters,’” Marko said. “I then thought and said ‘yes.’” Ukrainian men must register at their region’s draft board when they are 16. Marko was in Georgia studying and registered late last summer. “I finally got back and I should go there because there’s some charges if you do not go in time. Since my case was special and I was sponsored by the EU and had all my documents, they looked at it and were impressed. They thought ‘I could not bribe him because he has everything.’ They looked at it and eventually, one guy looked at it and asked me how many languages I speak. I told them I spoke Ukrainian, Russian, English, Spanish, and a bit of Polish. He just stood up laughing and slow clapping. That was disgusting and humiliating. I couldn’t do anything about it,” he said. In the end, he was happy to get the document, it was one of the required documents he must have to leave the country. “There are many legal holes in the Ukrainian system. If I ever enlisted, my friend told me that it is not a nice place to be. You are dragged and punished for nothing. If you know more than others, they treat you like a nerd and not a part of the crowd. You cannot get any kind of commanding position if you do not have relatives or do some major heroic accomplishment which requires years of military service,” he said. This war has grown from traditional combat, one between soldier and soldier, to civil2 SPRING 2022 | AUBG DAILY ians in an information war that civilians can’t run away from. A phone or laptop to get updates was almost always on hand: major war updates, regional laws, street closures, and assistance needed were thrown in Telegram group chats. Marko participates in one that has over 300,000 Ukrainians. “I regularly check the news regarding the border and I saw that full time students studying international could leave with some documents,” he said. He did not know exactly which documents. AUBG mailed a package with every type of document he might need (enrollment certificate, letter from the president, etc) on March 29 to Warsaw. Volunteers brought them from Warsaw to Marko in Lviv via bus. O n Sunday, April 3, Marko took a bus to Krakow, Poland from Lviv. At the border, he was stopped. “They told me some new law was in effect since the day before and I could not leave,” Marko said. This law was passed while Marko was traveling to the Krakovets border. “I just sat there for 20 minutes and told them to look at my documents again and they let me through,” Marko said. On a train to Krakow’s airport, he was given a free ticket upon showing his Ukrainian passport – a common way countries are assisting the movement of refugees around Europe. “I am at the airport in Krakow, waiting for check-in,” he texted me. From there, he flew to Thessaloniki, Greece, where an AUBG-hired car picked Marko up and drove him to Blagoevgrad. “I arrived at 2:30 in the morning,” he said. O n our walk to the AUBG Main Building on Monday, April 4, he told me “I couldn’t go to class that first week or so.” As troops headed to the frontlines outside Mariupol, Kharkiv, and Kyiv during the first weeks of the war, Marko and a few volunteers took over a bakery. Marko and the others baked half a ton of bread – around 50 loaves of bread per day – for the territorial defense forces. When outside the bakery, Marko and his family assisted refugees in finding housing, cooking food, and even hosted some in their own home. As the shock of the war waned, Marko had to make a choice. Either be a student or be a soldier. Marko sent me a video from his apartment window in Lviv of black smoke and sirens wailing. He texted me, “bombs flew over our house.” Two things became clear: the war was not ending soon and a warzone is no place for online lectures. “ An air siren went off during my politics exam,” he said. Marko rarely visited the bunkers, he told me they were too far and that the focus should be on helping people get to those bunkers to avoid chaos. Lviv has acted as a hub for displaced Ukrainians to head further west into Poland, Hungary, or Slovakia. The downtown portion is a UNESCO World Heritage site and the city is known for its unique coffee. Marko was born and raised in Lviv. He beamed about the city and told me Lviv comes from the Ukrainian word “lev” which means lion. Marko lives in a two bedroom Soviet-built apartment – “it’s typical,” he said. Monuments around the city are being dismantled or covered to protect the city’s history. Anyone taking photographs of the process is arrested under suspicion of assisting Russian troops. The city was considered one of the safest places in Ukraine but consistent air raids on nearby military sites questioned this enclave of safety. “ My family is used to Russian aggression,” Marko told me. Marko’s father’s life was threatened during his shortlived journalism career in the 1990s for his coverage of the Chechen War. Marko’s great-grandfather was killed during the initial phase of Soviet collectivization of farms. Those that opposed giving their land up to the central government were shot. A century of scars from Moscow solidifies his family’s Ukrainian identity. M arko has been at AUBG for one week. I saw him at the AUBG Taste Fest, an event organized by students where students from different countries cook their local foods and share them. Some performed dances, sang songs, and Marko played the guitar and sang a Ukrainian song as AUBG Ukrainians stood behind him clapping in beat to the tune of the song. In front of some 200 students, Marko embodied the creative, the bold, the community elements that are the pillars that the university stands on. Marko may be gone from home, but he is where he is meant to be: Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria. Marko singing and playing the guitar at AUBG’s 2022 Taste Fest.
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