Making a Difference in the War in Ukraine

Marina Hrytsenko ’23 spent the second semester of her junior year in London in an academic and social justice program run by Boston University and co-sponsored by Vassar. Three days before her 21st birthday in February 2022, she was visiting her family in Ukraine when she began to hear talk about an imminent Russian invasion. She dismissed the concerns, but back in London, on the evening of her birthday, she received a call from her boyfriend who told her Russian President Vladimir Putin had issued a statement ordering the skies closed to civilian aircraft near the Ukraine border. The next morning, she awoke to 40 missed calls. The shelling and bombing had begun in her family’s hometown of Kharkiv, and a text from her boyfriend read: “I can’t reach you. Your parents are alive.”

Hrytsenko tried to call everyone in her family, but no one replied. “I didn’t know then, but my dad [a lieutenant colonel in the Ukraine Air Force] was already fighting, my grandparents’ town was getting occupied, and my mom and sister were hiding in a shelter,” she said. “All I could do was go to protests, but I mostly felt numb.”

In the fall, Hrytsenko returned to Vassar for her senior year, but she had already resolved to move back to Ukraine to help in the fight. And a few months after she graduated, she secured a position as a foreign policy advisor to a leader of the Ukraine Parliament, Oleksandra Ustinova. The work has been challenging and demanding, but Hrytsenko has experienced some tangible successes. She was part of an eight-member delegation of Ukrainian officials who visited Washington, DC, in May to lobby for permission to use U.S. weapons to strike at targets inside Russia. Two weeks later, President Biden issued that permission.

How has this 23-year-old managed to rise to such an important position in Ukraine’s fight for its freedom? Hrytsenko had secured internships in Ukraine during each Vassar break. Because the United States is one of Ukraine’s closest allies, government leaders there were looking for people who were familiar with U.S. culture and politics, Hrytsenko explained, so there was a place for a Vassar international studies major in the Ukraine government. “Not many people get this chance so early in life, but people felt I could use my education at a time when the United States was such a key ally,” she said.

Hrytsenko’s principal duties involve facilitating communication among members of the Ukraine Parliament, representatives of foreign governments, business leaders, and the general public. “Topics I currently focus on are primarily related to the questions of military support and arms control, as my MP is the chairwoman of special commission on arms control,” she said. “I interact most often with officials in the United States but also work with the governments of Canada and the European Union. We are working right now on the training of F-16 pilots.”

When she was a junior in high school, she applied for a program called Ukraine Global Scholars, run by Ukrainians who are familiar with U.S. colleges. She used the program to prepare for the college admission process. Later that year, Hrytsenko was awarded a full scholarship to Vassar.

“My liberal arts background has equipped me to conduct meaningful research and learn how to discuss any issue,” she noted. “It has given me the ability to adjust to new circumstances really quickly, and that’s what my work is about every day.”

One of Hrytsenko’s senior thesis advisors was Robert K. Brigham, Shirley Ecker Boskey Professor of History and International Relations. She hopes that what she learned in his course on negotiating conflicts and how peace treaties are written will be useful when the war with Russia ends. Until that day comes, Hrytsenko says she is proud to be working alongside her fellow Ukrainians as they attempt to repel the Russian invasion.—Larry Hertz