Letter from Ukraine by Maya Dawson
When Olesya Tretyak came to Conifer High School in the 2014-2015 school year she ran on the cross country team. She went skiing with her exchange family. Now, back home in Ukraine, she is in the middle of a war. Tretyak, now 21, lives in Lviv, a city in western Ukraine near Poland. Though it is far from the warfront the city has not been spared from conflict. On March 26 the city was hit by two rockets that destroyed a depot providing fuel to Ukranian soldiers, only a day after Russia claimed that they were shifting their attention to eastern Ukraine’s disputed territories. Conifer resident Lori Vaclavik hosted Tretyak during her exchange year in Colorado. The previous year she
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hosted a student from Russia, which makes it difficult for her to see the innocent people caught on both sides of the war. “Other than the countries from which they came the two girls had much in common, and they both desired a future in a peaceful country,” Vaclavik said. For Tretyak, though, that peace is still distant. She wrote about her experience in a letter to our student media program. Our staff believes that it is best to hear about her experience in her
Olesya Tretyak, 2014
own voice, and have not altered the letter.
As I am writing this it is the 9th of
March 2022, the 14th day of the war in Ukraine. The 14th day of Russia bombarding my country, targeting civilians, schools, hospitals, and kids! Let’s go back in time, to the 23rd of February, a day before the war. Me and my boyfriend were looking at flats, planning to move in together. We just visited a potential apartment and were so excited to start this new chapter of our lives, towards which both of us have worked very hard. I went home feeling very happy and in anticipation. My mom woke me up around 7:30 in the morning, crying and saying that I should pack a bag and flee the country because the war has started. That our capital - Kyiv- as well as other cities are being bombarded. I couldn’t quite register what was going on. How can one understand that there is a real WAR happening in the 21st century? With tanks, bombs, terror. You read about it in the the history books, but it is impossible to comprehend that it can be happening in reality. To this day, I sometimes think that I will wake up and it all will be a terrible, terrible nightmare. It just feels so surreal. A good 10 minutes passed before I snapped out of my frozen state. I made a decision that I want to stay home and don’t want to run. It’s hard to say what the right decision should be in this situation. If I had kids I would probably cross the border. But since my dad and my boyfriend expressed that they will not run and will fight if needed, me and my mother wanted to stay as well, to help with anything we can. I have a younger sister, but luckily
