The first thing Ulia and I talked about was Taylor Swift. She was sitting in a car in Bulgaria, the evening sky behind her. I sat cross-legged on my purple dorm room bed as morning became early afternoon in Ohio. We were 8 time zones and 5,200 miles apart, talking over Zoom, but we still had so much in common: Taylor Swift, Marvel movies, the stress of applying to college—which once felt like the most urgent thing in the world to both of us. For me, a college sophomore, that was a couple of years ago. For Ulia, who’s 18, it was right up until two weeks ago, when her life was interrupted by war.
Ulia is part of an acting studio called Actors Lab Ukraine. Last fall, Oleksandra Oliiny, Ulia’s teacher, asked my mother, Laura Cahill, to teach a screenwriting class to her students. That’s how I met Ulia. I knew we’d become friends eventually, but I never expected it’d be under these circumstances.
When we got on Zoom last week—six days after Putin’s Russian army had invaded Ukraine—Ulia was parked outside the Ukrainian House in Varna, where she volunteers, distributing supplies to refugees from her country. She’s been living in an apartment in Varna, a city on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria, for the past two weeks with her mom and her brothers Mathew and Platon, while her father remains in Ukraine, doing his part to help the fight for freedom. He promised Ulia’s mom that he wouldn’t take up arms himself.
Ulia made time to tell me her story because even though she’s safe now in Bulgaria, she is living and breathing her country’s struggle and she doesn’t want the rest of us to look away. We talked for two hours, and then it was time for Ulia to go back inside—supplies needed organizing, friends on the ground needed support. Taylor Swift would have to wait. Here’s the story of Ulia’s life over the past few weeks, in her own words.
We left Kyiv by car on February 16. My family has an apartment here in Varna, which is the only reason we left, because we had somewhere to go. My dad could feel that something was about to happen, but no one knew when or what. It was just a sense.
My family decided that if nothing actually happened, we would just have a vacation in Bulgaria. Winter holidays, for a week. But while we were planning for that, my dad asked us all to pack enough clothes for one month, just in case. I was so convinced that nothing was ever going to happen.
After we had been in Bulgaria for a week, my brother woke me up to tell me that there was war in Ukraine. It was 5 in the morning when most people woke up from the bombing. I was in my bed in Varna. Everyone in my family woke up to the same words, the same information but not the same sounds coming from the outside.
I was feeling anxious, worried, everything that goes with war. I had a kind of anxiety attack. In those first few days, I didn’t know what I could do to help. I was even thinking that it would be better for me to still be in Ukraine, to be with my country and go through what everyone else is going through. Instead, I found my own way to help. I found Facebook groups like “Ukrainians in Bulgaria.” I found out that people are gathering, having strikes, and volunteering. So I did too.
I’m an official volunteer now with the Ukrainian House in Varna. We gather medicine, food, and clothes for refugees. People in Bulgaria bring us what we need. They go grocery shopping. It’s not like we have money to buy supplies—people bring us things, and we organize everything. We used to have a list of things we needed: wipes, clothes, diapers. But people brought more of everything than we even had room for, so we’ve been rewriting our list and thinking about what we need to do next.
A lot of Ukrainians show up with nothing except themselves and their children, so we give them food and clothes. This work has been helping me to feel okay. It takes my mind off actual events to help people out in whatever way I can.
I went to the border in the middle of the night with my friend George, to pick up an 89-year-old woman named Galina and her daughter. Ukrainian soldiers had driven them to the Bulgarian border because Galina couldn’t cross on foot. It was late, and we had to drive 118 miles back to Varna. We brought Galina a pastry, and she tried to offer half of it to me.
I love people with all my heart. I’ve never exactly been patriotic, in the conventional sense. But I don’t get tired of saying how much I love Ukrainian people.
When it comes to my country’s future, to be honest, I’m scared. We’re all hoping for NATO to close the sky over Ukraine. Everyone talks about that and hopes that it will happen today, if not right now. And if not today, then tomorrow.
Most of us really believe that the people who initiated this war are just crazy. I’m afraid that those people who are already going to sink and drown will do whatever they can to take others down with them. I hope that those people—and one person in particular—will be stopped before it’s too late.
This morning, I had plans to volunteer, so I just copied a phrase and texted it to each of my friends to check in: “Are you safe?” They all answered with something like: “Yes, I’m fine. I’m with my friends, all my relatives are still alive, and we are sitting underground or trying to cross the border.” They’re still alive. I’m immensely grateful for that.
We’re all posting all the time. Everyone—every Ukrainian—is posting. We were asked to stop posting information about our military to avoid exposing their position. We stopped right away. But for the first two days, people were posting everything, every single sound. Because it’s really scary. People were hearing explosions. Everyone was writing: Is this our building? Is this our tank, or is it the Russians’? But now we’re mainly posting information about volunteers and about people who need help.
We’ve also been circulating photos and videos to convince all Russians that there really is a war going on, because there are still people who don’t believe this is really happening.
I have a friend in Moscow who used to study in Kyiv. I was expecting her to text me to find out if I’m safe, but she never did. Then she posted a Russian flag on her Instagram Story. I don’t even know what to think about that. I don’t understand what she thinks because she used to study in Kyiv with me. I have so many things to care about right now, and her opinion about this war isn’t one of them. But I am interested. I want to ask: “What are you thinking, if you don’t care?”
I decided something for myself. I’m saying this because I truly believe in it: When something like this happens to some other country—although I hope it never does—I will never allow myself to just be quiet and to neglect real people’s lives.
It’s not like I was completely naive before the war, wearing rose-colored glasses and thinking that life is perfect. I’ve struggled, and I’ve had my own difficulties. I was applying to universities. I was having an anxiety attack every single week. I had my own goals and dreams.
The first time my dad asked us to go to Bulgaria, I said no. I was applying to universities and I had an audition the next day. I was worried our apartment in Varna wouldn’t have working internet when we got there, so I refused to leave until my audition was over. My dad said, “Fine.” So I had my audition for university, and two days later, I left.
I never want to give up on my dreams. I want to believe that I will actually go to university and that I will study abroad and eventually I’ll make it to Broadway, or something like that. I want to believe that there is something waiting for me later. And that when I win my first award, I’ll go onstage holding the Ukrainian flag.
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