First anniversary of war raises anxiety in Ukrainians living in Bay Area

BERKELEY — As the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches a family who came to the U.S. before the war say they’re grateful to have a home in the Bay Area. Even as they try to move on with their new lives in California, they can’t stop thinking about what is happening back home.

“I was doing the same thing in Ukraine and I’m basically doing the same thing here,” said Nataliia Goshylyk, a lecturer at UC Berkeley. “This was a very unique experience, I didn’t ever expect in my life that I would be here, working on a such a big campus and in such a huge university.”

The change in schools was one of many significant differences for Goshylyk who is a Fulbright scholar. She was a professor in Ukraine before she came to the Bay Area.

As a scholar at Berkeley, she studied how sustainability is discussed on social media. When her time in the U.S. was set to end last summer with the Fulbright program, she planned to go back to Ukraine with her husband and two daughters. Then the war began.

“I can’t afford not to know what’s going on there,” she told KPIX. “I actually felt like I belong in this community, in this Berkeley community, in this university community.”

She found a new opportunity to keep herself and her family in the U.S. for another year teaching the Ukrainian language and culture to students across the University of California system. She still has family back home and some have even served on the front lines of the current conflict.

“Right now, we’re not able to say what will happen in six months or a year,” Goshylyk said. “Actually, I’m processing everything that’s going on in Ukraine — the war — on a daily basis.”

Nova Ukraine is a Bay Area nonprofit helping people in that country. Last year, before Russia’s invasion, they organized many local rallies to bring attention to the looming conflict. Leaders of the group say they’ve raised money to pay for medication, hospital supplies, beds and generators in Ukraine.

“It’s important to keep the awareness and to keep people informed, especially that the circumstances are changing. Two years ago or even one year ago many people could not find Ukraine on the map,” said Igor Markov, one of the directors of Nova Ukraine. “People are dying every day and there are bombings of pretty much all major Ukrainian cities. We are thinking of the short-term things we can do. We’re thinking of the longterm possible developments, what can happen and how we can help.”

Markov says there is only so much they can do as a nonprofit to support those still in Ukraine if the military operation is unable to make progress on the ground. He also worries that Nova Ukraine will not raise as much money in 2023 as it did last year.

“In the big scheme of things, the only way this war is going to end is when Ukraine liberates the occupied territories,” Markov said.

That concern about the outlook of the war is shared by others in the Bay Area but Goshylyk says she has to stay focused on what is happening now in her life here and for her people back home. She hopes to get more resources for the Ukrainian program at UC Berkeley and find new ways to engage her students about the culture. Her family remains hopeful they will return home one day soon.

“What’s interesting here is, I guess, all the Ukrainians all over the world and in Ukraine have the same relations to future so we are not thinking about the future but we’re thinking about the present and that’s enough,” Goshylyk said.