My life stopped on February 24

VIKTORIIA LAPA, ACADEMIC FELLOW IN THE DEPARTMENT OF LEGAL STUDIES, RECOUNTS HER PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AS A UKRAINIAN ACADEMIC IN MILAN DURING THESE WEEKS OF WAR

by Viktoriia Lapa, Academic Fellow, Law Department, Bocconi University

My usual life stopped on the 24th of February 2022.

I woke up at 6am in Milan (7am Kyiv) and I saw all these messages from my friends and news notifications that Ukraine was being bombarded by Russia, including an airport and military bases in my native city (Dnipro). I called my grandma and I remember the words she said to me over the phone “I love you and thanks a lot for everything you’ve done for me in my life”. It sounded so strange to me so I interrupted her and said that everything would be fine and no need to tell me this.

From that day on I have a double life: on the one side I see a normal peaceful life in Milan and on the other side I have a telephone in my pocket where there is a totally different life called ‘war’ in Ukraine. I have all types of messages from Ukraine: in one message my relative from Mariupol says that the bombs are very close to him but he is still alive, in another message my professor from Kharkiv who has been living for more than 3 weeks in a bunker asks for help with some basic medicine. Unfortunately, I even have messages that speak about deaths: one relative of mine texted me that one of their relatives was killed by Russians in Izyum (Kharkiv region) and they were not able to have a funeral because the city was still heavily bombarded, so they put his body in a canteen. I must also say that I have messages from my relatives from Moscow who support this war and say that Ukraine deserves this war because it committed a genocide in Donbas (which is a pure Russian propaganda).

During these three weeks of war I’ve had various periods of despair, tears, anger and silence. But every day when I wake up, I want to discover that the war in Ukraine is just simply a nightmare. My mind doesn’t want to accept this war and I still live in a Netflix movie. It seems that I can still take a flight from Milan to Kharkiv and visit my relatives there, go to the university I graduated from and take a train to my home in Dnipro where I still teach at university. None of this I can do today.

Instead, I can concentrate and help Ukraine from Milan: that’s why I went to help those refugees that arrived from Ukraine to Italy. This is a totally different story which puts you in front of various problems but which gives you an opportunity to be of help to those people who suffer.

Last, but not least, I would like to say that this double life has been a bit easier thanks to my friends, colleagues and students at Bocconi who reached out to me and offered their support and who are not afraid to condemn the war waged by Russia against Ukraine. Grazie mille, ragazzi!