Maryville College exchange student Mariia Yanbergs recalls the horror of war in her native Ukraine
April 3, 2024
It’s the sounds of war that Mariia Yanbergs remembers the most.
Waking up in the middle of the night on Feb. 24, 2022, to the sound of missiles screaming overhead, launched from Russian naval vessels off the Black Sea coast into the heart of her Ukrainian homeland. The roar of a collapsing building less than a mile away, struck during the ceaseless bombardment in the weeks after the invasion.
Although she’s living on the other side of the world, studying abroad for a semester at Maryville College as part of an international exchange program, she remembers. And her heart aches for her countrymen and women still caught in a conflict that’s taken thousands of civilian lives and sent more than 14 million fleeing from their homes.
“None of us could have imagined that our lives were going to change in one day,” she said. “Before, we were living our lives. I was in my freshman year at my university, and I was really enjoying my student life and making future goals and future plans. We had heard a lot about (Russian military movements), but none of us really believed it would happen.
“We’re one of the most modern countries in Europe, one of the most digitalized countries with AI technology, and we never thought it would happen there. We hadn’t been expecting it until that night at 4 a.m., when we heard the missile attacks.”
An idyllic Odesan upbringing
Yanbergs was raised in Odesa, the third-largest city in Ukraine with more than 1 million people. She smiles when she recalls the bucolic coastline, the charismatic friends and fellow Odesans who always seemed to smile and laugh. Born in 2004, her childhood, she said, was an idyllic one.
“I love my family and how they made me happy. They gave me a great education, and I had a lot of friends,” she said. “I really love how I was brought up, and one day I want to have a family similar to my own.”
Ukraine broke from the Soviet Union some 13 years before she was born, but tensions between the country and Russia have persisted. In 2014, Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean region of southern Ukraine, roughly 500 miles to the east and south of Odesa, but as she grew into adulthood, Ukrainians believed an uneasy peace would hold. Rather than geopolitical worries, Yanbergs found herself considering the options for her future.
“I was struggling with what university to choose, because in Ukraine, we have a great education system, and we are in fourth place globally for people with higher education,” she said. “I knew that I wanted to do STEM, so I decided to study software engineering with an international business minor. I finished high school at 16 and wanted to go to our capital, Kyiv, but I got my start at Odesa National Polytechnic University.”
During her first two years of college, she traveled to four separate countries for short study abroad opportunities, and by the time she was about to turn 18, she began to consider moving to Kyiv, where she had many friends living and learning.
And then, while her father was out of the country on business, she and her mother awakened on Feb. 24, 2022, to the sound of bombs.
“We live near the sea, and when we heard and saw the missile attacks, we opened the news to see that every big city was affected and was being bombed,” she said. “There was a lot of propaganda coming out of Russia, which tried to assure people they were only attacking Ukraine military points, but that was the biggest lie. There were so many missile attacks that killed civilians.”
Including friends. In one of Kyiv’s suburbs, one in particular ventured outside of a bomb shelter when the all-clear signal was given. Another projectile killed him instantly, she said.
“He was 21 years old — very great and nice, and that really affected me and my family,” she said. “You never expect that something like this is going to affect you and your life. You never know when you might die. It affects everything, from your mental health to your academic success.”
Escape and resettlement
In June 2023, missiles severely damaged Odesa National Polytechnic University, shattering windows and destroying classrooms. The news was a constant litany of cities and towns she knew intimately razed by shelling and Russian troops. The city of Mariupol, closer to Odesa than Memphis is to Knoxville, was completely destroyed as Russian forces moved in and took over in May 2022. By that point, Yanbergs and her mother had fled the country.
“The only way to escape was to drive a car and flee, with no assurance you would survive and make it to a part of Ukraine not occupied yet,” she said.
The family made it to Romania safely, but it was a crowded, chaotic scene in which so many of her fellow Ukrainians had fled with a single bag of belongings, their entire lives reduced to one suitcase. The Yanbergs were fortunate in that they had money saved to afford a place to rent; because of that, they declined refugee aid so that it could be given to countrymen and women in greater need.
She felt, she said, like a character in a book by Erich Remarque, the German author of “All Quiet on the Western Front,” a casualty of war struggling to make sense of all that had occurred. To cope, she turned back to the one thing that still brought her joy: learning.
“I decided to look for study abroad programs, and I eventually made it to Germany,” she said. “I said to myself, ‘You have to go on,’ because I believe that if you want something, you should always go for it. That’s when I began applying for more fellowships and programs.”
After short trips to study in Lithuania, Georgia and Finland, she was finally awarded a U.S. State Department Global Undergraduate Exchange Program scholarship. It was a year-long process of document submissions and applications, and the international competition was stiff. But when she got word she had been accepted, it seemed almost serendipitous. Many of her friends, she added, call her Mary. Maryville College, then, seemed like the perfect destination.
“This is what I wanted for a really long period of time,” she said. “I have been going to English classes since I was 5, and I wanted to come to an English-speaking society and not experience a language barrier, and although I grew up on the Black Sea — I’m a beach girl — I really do love the mountains!”
During the dark days after she first arrived in Romania, she and her family were labeled refugees, a term that was cause for exclusion and judgment in more hegemonic European cultures. It was hard to assimilate, she said, because each nation is fiercely independent, as Ukraine is.
“No matter how much you try, you’re not treated as locals. People feel sorry for what’s happening in your country, but they still don’t accept you,” she said. “But when I came here, it absolutely gave me another perspective. Here, I’ve found the greatest diversity I’ve ever seen. Here, people appreciate everyone despite their backgrounds, cultures or traditions. People respect everyone. I’ve only been here for a month and a half, and I already feel like part of this society.”
From Ukraine to Maryville College: A literal student ambassador
She still very much feels, however, like something of an ambassador. The war at home is never far from her mind, and while she’s found friends and supporters among members of the Maryville College community, she also feels a certain responsibility to represent Ukraine and remind Americans that a conflict 10,000 miles away is a very personal one for those whose allegiance to it is fiercer than ever.
“All Ukrainians want to be independent, and to be here as a representative of my country is a great honor,” she said. “This is my nationality. It’s where I came from. It’s where I belong. I’m honored and proud to be Ukrainian, and to educate more people about it. I want people to acknowledge the war, and even though they may be from a different part of the world, to remember that they met a person from Ukraine.
“I want people to remember that they’ve met someone from Ukraine who is struggling with war in the 21st century. Despite our great culture, our traditions, our history, we’re fighting for our way of life. I want people to know we’re not just some country in Eastern Europe.”
On Feb. 20, Yanbergs led a Global Showcase panel sponsored by the College’s Global Citizenship Organization, speaking to fellow students and faculty members about her country. The comfort and confidence to do so, she added, was born of the warmth and welcoming nature of the Maryville College community. It is, she said, a home away from home, one that in some ways seems foreign and exotic, but so very far from the sound of bombs that she’ll remember for the rest of her life.
“When I first arrived and came to my dorm, I had two roommates, and they were such a great comfort from the first time they met me,” she said. “They cooked me dinner, they got me flowers, they did their best to understand how tired I was and what I had been through to get here. They respected me and treated me like an equal. All of the students, and the professors too, have treated me so nice and want me to succeed, and it shows me that so many people in this country care about each other, despite different races or cultures or backgrounds.
“I’m happy to be here at Maryville College, and I want people to read this and understand how my country is struggling and fighting for freedom. What you have here, we’re fighting for that, and the people from Ukraine are grateful for all of the aid and the help. We could never be grateful enough for everything.”
