Ukraine, the rector of the University of Kiev: “Hundreds of students at the front, support chosen but it is terrible”

In Ukraine “a total of 548 state institutions have been hit, about 30 are university institutions and 72 have been completely destroyed. These are not military targets, they are civilians, they are targeting children and their future. Stop this war, please”. The heartfelt appeal from Kiev comes to AdnKronos from Volodymyr Bugrov, rector of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev, one of the two largest universities in Ukraine, which has about three thousand teachers, a thousand researchers and about thirty thousand students and alumni . “A few days ago a student of ours died under bombs, her name was Yulia Zdanovska, she was 21 and had won the 2017 Mathematics Olympics in Massachusetts – says the rector – she went to visit her parents between 8 and 9 March, but the missiles killed her. ” To live with the war “we were used to it, it did not start today but in 2014, we were therefore aware – says Brugov – But we never imagined that in the center of Europe in the 21st century such a thing could have happened”. Many university students who have chosen to go to the front to fight. “The university has a special department that prepares the officers, the military, and those who have enlisted for work. But about 500, between teachers and students, have joined together to fight among the volunteers – reveals- Our dean of the faculty of history is now a head of the territorial defense division. ” As rector “I agree and support their choice to go to the front for their country – the rector says – but I realize that it is a tragedy, they should be in the classrooms studying, it is terrible”. The lessons are currently suspended. “Within the university we have created dormitories, both for students from Kiev and from other cities who need to be accommodated – says the rector of AdnKronos -, currently about 12 thousand people are housed”. ‘I am half Russian, but in the eyes of their soldiers there is no repentance’ The war is excruciating not only as the rector of a large university, but also on a personal level. “I am half Russian, my father is Russian but he studied in Ukraine and then stayed here -explains Volodymyr Bugrov- My wife is from the east of Ukraine, from a Russian-speaking region occupied in 2014 by the Russians, with the beginning of the war. There is torment in me, of course. But with my relatives who have lived in Russia since 2014 we have no relationship, these people either do not understand or do not want to understand. ” front, the rector of Taras Scevchenko University would not have much to say. “We helped organize a press conference with Russian soldiers here at the university.” he”. It is difficult to predict the outcome of this conflict, but the rector has no doubts. “We will certainly win because we stay here to defend our homeland – he says decided – The ‘Russian world’ that Putin wanted to protect is destroying it, it is razing to the ground all the cities that had more connections with Russia, that spoke Russian, from Mariupol onwards. Stop the war, because the Ukrainians will fight to the end “, he concludes. (by Ilaria Floris)