Science Under Siege

Please tell us a bit about yourself
 

I'm Anastasia, currently a PhD student at the Analytical Chemistry Department at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine. It seems that my childhood dreams of magic and something unusual in this world have grown into my current passion – chemistry. I have been and still am involved in work with microextraction methods. I started with the development and optimization of solid-phase microextraction methods, and now I am engaged in the synthesis of materials for sorption.

How has the war changed your life and your studies?
 

The beginning of the war was followed by a great panic. I slept only three hours that night because I had stayed up late working on my assignments for university. And early in the morning, I started receiving calls from my family. My friends decided to leave Kyiv, and I went with them. At any other time, what would have been a fun trip in a cheerful company, however, because of news, panic and uncertainty, it became one of the most terrifying days of my life. There were huge queues at pharmacies and shops, everything was sold out very quickly, there were huge traffic jams on the road, and the gas stations were out of fuel.

We never know what tomorrow will bring, but during the war it feels completely different. I was afraid to stay in Kyiv when all my relatives were in Vinnytsia and my friends were leaving. But I was also afraid to leave, because, if the bridges were destroyed, we could be stranded without fuel for an unknown period of time and cut off from our families.

I spent two weeks in my hometown and then went to Italy, where my mother works. In order not to waste time, I found an opportunity to do some scientific research at the University of Bologna and started learning Italian. It is rather ironic that I wanted and planned on going abroad for an internship and exchange of experience, which did not happen due to the general situation and the problems related to the COVID-19 pandemic. But when I was forced to go abroad, I wanted to return home more than anything. About a year later, I did, although this decision was also partly influenced by the illness of my grandmother, who remained in Ukraine and needed my help.  

How does the war impact your daily life?
 

I continue my studies at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. It's hard not to know how the next air alert will end, to hear explosions and think about what it could be. For a scientist who plans a day, an experiment, and work in the laboratory, it is very inconvenient when an alarm is triggered – you need to stop everything, turn everything off, and go to the shelter. In fact, it's great that people adapt to the conditions, and students have lessons in classrooms, the opportunity to acquire skills by doing work with their own hands. But sometimes this can mean staying in a shelter for several hours instead of doing meaningful work.

Some university buildings suffered a lot. For example, not at my university, but other university buildings in Kyiv had 200 windows broken by an explosion wave. The scientists (and not only scientists) from the cities closer to the frontline, like Kharkiv, suffer from such destruction from missiles more frequently.

We recently held a conference at our university called Kyiv Conference: Analytical Chemistry: Modern Trends – 2024. It is great that it took place, and extremely impressive that people get results and conduct experiments in such difficult conditions. It is sad that the conference was held online as it was the easiest way to ensure the safety of participants and the possibility of inviting participants from other countries. Discussions of the reports as questions and answers and the opportunity to stay in touch after the conference always remain, but there is no element of personal communication in small groups over a cup of coffee. These are all small details that are insignificant against the grand issues, but these details are what make up the normal, satisfying life we would like to live.

The unknown and uncertainty is something that becomes a part of every day. In Kyiv, there may be no alerts for several days; sometimes there are several in a single day. And once it starts, it can last for half an hour, or three hours, or six hours – whatever it needs to be, and you don't know when it will end. Alerts bring irritation for having to postpone, fear because you never know how it will end, but mostly sadness because someone suffers and dies. Of course, even without an alert, wartime means that there are people dying, but being distracted by work or study helps.

There were power outages as a result of the attacks on the power system. Now the situation has improved, but with the winter approaching, it could happen again. It was not the most pleasant experience when the power is available for two hours, then off for two to six hours in a repeating cycle – sometimes according to the schedule, sometimes without due to emergency outages. We rely heavily on electrical appliances for everything from cooking to data processing, studying, or entertainment. Electricity is also important for the functioning of the laboratory, and we really need to know if it will be available in the next hour to avoid damage from improper shutdown.

I would say that all days are divided into ordinary days without or almost no alarms, without much news; and tense days when there are a lot of alarms that ruin all plans, when there is no electricity, or when you have to switch from thinking about how to live to what you need to do to survive. But probably the worst is an ordinary day when nothing seems to be wrong, but a friend or colleague tells you about their relatives whom they will never see again.

How do you and your friends keep strong, what helps you to get you through?
 

The first question that came to mind when the war started was: how is this possible? Such cruelty, such hopelessness. Is there any sense in life, in doing anything, if everything can fall apart and end so quickly? But in the middle of it all, it turned out that there were good people, and that's what gave me the strength to keep going. Even if I didn't require any help at that moment, just knowing that there were people who cared helped a lot. An English teacher from Portugal, with whom I had only a few classes many years ago, wrote to me in the first week of the war asking if I needed shelter. Colleagues in Bologna tried to distract me from my worries or offer help more than once.

By helping others, I believe we also help ourselves. By volunteering my time to help, I felt that my presence and my life were not in vain.

What is your message to our readers?
 

Life goes on, we cannot delay until later; we need to take inspiration from every day. War is tiring for everyone, it destroys lives. We need to be kinder to others, and while we are alive, we need to do everything we can to make sure that life does not go in vain.