Anastasiia Pereverten is a Ukrainian student activist who is currently an exchange student at the University of Wyoming in the UGRAD program. She is the only student from Ukraine at UW, and when Russia invaded Ukraine, she began to advocate for her country on campus. Anastasiia has given a host of interviews, including with USA Today and local Wyoming papers. She spoke with The Politic over Zoom about the war, her activism, and the historical context that frames her advocacy.
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Did you learn about the history of Ukraine and Russia in history classes? What sense did you get of the relationship between the two countries? And how did that change after the Russian annexation of Crimea?
I learned about all of that during history class in school. Until the Revolution of Dignity [a popular uprising that ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 following his decision to seek closer ties with Russia instead of the European Union], I didn’t even think about a clear division between our countries and our culture. They were smashed in popular culture. That’s an important note. They were not merged in everyone’s mind and in every respect, but it was presented on TV and in other popular media as being almost one theme.
The Revolution of Dignity started when I was in fifth grade. I remember sitting on a couch at my grandmother’s sister’s flat and watching a TV broadcast recapping the story of the occupation of Crimea. I felt an animalistic fury, thinking how it’s impossible to take away a part of a country. You cannot imagine something that barbaric happening.
From the fifth grade, in every school, you take a Ukrainian history course. And every lesson affirms the notion that you’ve never been friends or brothers [with Russia], you’ve always been enemies, that [Russia] will always try to destroy the idea of our independence and culture and language. Then when I entered university, I decided to major in cultural studies. So, it’s about the same thing. We learn about undoubtable and indisputable arguments for Ukraine being a state with a continued history of statehood, and a continuous history of independence. Russia is ignoring that. That is what we are now witnessing. They just don’t acknowledge our independence.
2014 was a turning point. My generation was raised on the events from the Revolution of Dignity. More than one hundred people died [during the protests] in my city, fighting for Ukrainian freedom, the right to be free and independent, and not to comply with a dictator. This was a knowledge that I inherited. People have the power to change this at any point. If you decide to act, you are able to change anything — any dictator, any oligarch, any system. It will likely take sacrifices, but it’s possible. I was 11 [at the time of the Revolution of Dignity], but now I’m 18. I believe that event shaped me as an individual, and it played the very same role for many of my peers.
Tell us about the moment you found out Russia had invaded Ukraine. What was going through your mind at that moment, especially as you were so far away from home?
There were lots of public discussions about Russian troops at the border, I believe in October. But we were pretty confident that it was just a political pressure game, and they wouldn’t end up doing anything. It wasn’t unusual for Ukrainians to hear this — we’ve been living through that since 2014. There is constantly a fear of escalation, a fear of a new wave of attacks, a fear of bombings of eastern Ukraine, or of cyber-attacks happening with governmental and private labs in Ukraine. So, it felt just like an ordinary situation.
I believe it was on February 16th, when Putin had a conference with his government officials. After that day, I started to feel extremely strained because all the headlines in the US media were posting only about the fear of invasion. It was always phrased in a way of tragedy that you cannot avoid. But it was impossible for me to believe. I thought that kind of escalation might happen in eastern Ukraine, but I could never, ever even guess that Russia would start bombing Kyiv.
I remember February 23rd in very small details. In Ukraine the war started on the 24th, but because of the time difference, here it was the 23rd.
At 8 PM, I opened Twitter, and saw messages that the war had started. I thought it was fake, so I started Googling and found out that the first explosion in Kyiv was 20 minutes from my home. When you’re reading about that, the only thing you can imagine is your house being bombed. No one is alive, probably. It’s the end of the world. This fear, it’s numbing.
I could not even start crying when I read it. You’re just in shock. I started to message my friends, my parents and grandparents. No one replied. I started calling them. It was 5 AM in Ukraine, so they were probably asleep. Nobody picked up. Then my dad called me, saying, “Yes, a couple of explosions happened, but you have nothing to worry about. We’re okay, we’re just waiting for instructions from the government and packing our things in a suitcase in case of evacuation.”
After an hour or so, the initial shock disappeared, and I just started to think of ideas of what I can do. So I stayed awake, and for the whole night, I was painting. I painted 100 or so stickers of Ukrainian flags. I don’t know why. I just had the idea that it would help to spread the word and encourage students to donate or get involved. I wrote a letter, and I left all the stickers and my letter in the basement of a residence hall. Throughout the whole night, I was tracking news and reading every message that I could find on Telegram [a social media messaging app] about the war.
A crucial thing I did on the first day of the war was write a couple of letters with relevant ways to address this topic on campus. The average level of knowledge about Ukraine in the US is cursory. So I created a list of actions that students and professors might be able to do, and I sent those letters to the president, to my professors, and my international advisor. On the second day of the war, I started meeting all these people, and we started acting together to support Ukraine here.
Do you know where your family and friends are now in Ukraine? What have they been telling you about the war?
All my family stayed in Ukraine. The second day of the war was the most intimidating — the Russian soldiers took over Chernobyl and there was a threat of catastrophe. That made my sibling and my mother extremely scared. They were saying goodbye to me. But the situation stabilized, and they moved to the suburbs, which is relatively safe. They started to feel secure, and they have the support of the whole family. It’s one house with thirteen people living there.
A couple of days ago during the night, [my family] heard the sounds of aircrafts. You get extremely frightened every time you hear anything. And my brother was trembling, hearing the sounds, even after feeling secure and not hearing anything for the last couple of weeks.
My family stays as strong and calm as possible. They’re supporting each other, staying positive, and making jokes. I call them every day. My grandma knows how pathetic coffee is in the US, so every time I call her, she says, “Is the coffee still that bad?” And it’s still bad. And she’s like, “My coffee is 100 times better.” She’s been neglecting the fear. She said “No, I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid. It’s our state, we’re staying. We’re staying.”
And I’m honestly stoked about the bravery and the courage of Ukranians. For instance, my mom’s cousin, he’s in the army and my mom’s sibling is in the territorial defense. People were staying in lines for days to register for territorial defense. And I believe the whole world was deeply impressed and inspired by Ukrainians’ bravery and courage, and their aspiration to sacrifice their lives for the future of their children, for their culture, and for their people.
What is it like talking to Americans about the war in Ukraine?
We had three days of tabling in the [University of Wyoming] student union building to share knowledge about Ukraine. We had two rallies, both were educational, not only to express solidarity with Ukraine, but also to inform people on what Ukraine is, the history of Ukraine, and the context of the war. We also wanted to share knowledge of how to support Ukraine, to whom to donate, and whom you can rely on for truthful information or credible donations.
The international office of the UW also organized a conversation with a retired US ambassador and an economics professor. Next week we are going to have a lecture from a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer who has been working in Ukraine for some time. We’re planning two screenings for documentaries about Ukrainian history. Also, I composed a list of books about Ukraine in English so that the university library can acquire them, so that we have a certain amount of information accessible for the faculty and students. We’re taking actions in the right direction.
Last Friday, I asked a retired US Ambassador about Crimea. And I said, “Hey, I’m just wondering, when Crimea was annexed, why was the US reaction so weak?” He said, “Oh, I don’t know. But maybe there’s just a general idea that Crimea is kind of part of Russia.” And that’s a historical myth. That’s a part of the propaganda. That’s the narrative being imposed by the Russian government through their propagandistic machine.
And now we must debunk those myths, all of them, to build a new Ukrainian narrative for the world. Otherwise, we won’t receive enough long-term support, even after our victory.
What do you think is your main goal with your advocacy? Is there something specific that you feel like you want to raise awareness about?
The core goal is to act until victory and do everything I can to change the community I’m living in right now. I want to involve and engage people to donate and raise awareness about Ukrainian authenticity because too many things have been stolen by Russia, in terms of cultural heritage, and it’s unacceptable. I would love for people to be informed about Ukraine being a historically independent country with its own culture and history.
Although it is important not to shift attention away from the army. The army is the biggest priority right now. It is the most crucial and lifesaving thing for us.
How do you want the US government or the world to address this war? What do you think we can do to make this war end?
Generally, governments need to get sober from the illusion that they can appease Russia. The Russian government is probably mad. And any rational arguments, just don’t seem reasonable to them. The idea of being afraid of provoking World War Three is absurd.
War is happening, but now Ukraine is fighting for the whole of Europe. If you have ever heard of Russian retorts, they’re always threatening not only Ukraine, but also European countries. They’ve been claiming their spread over Poland, over Baltic countries. They will not stop with Ukraine. If you struggle to believe that, you should just translate any rebroadcast of Russian governmental TV channels and you will have no doubts left.
The world leaders who have visited Ukraine within the last two weeks after the Bucha massacre have no illusions, they do not treat this war as something distant — they see how terrifying the actions of the Russian army are, and they fully understand the importance of acting in the fastest way possible.
Every [American] citizen has a chance to address their representatives. So, I highly encourage this. We were printing instructions [for University of Wyoming students] on how to address the governor in the fastest way possible. Organizing and participating in rallies is a way to draw attention of your representatives and governments towards issues – that’s extremely important right now.