Yuliya Paska ha abbandonato la sua Terra in seguito all'invasione russa dell'Ucraina, iniziata il 24 febbraio 2022.

Attualmente, grazie al programma Unipd 4 Ukraine, frequenta il master in Human rights and multi-level governance dell'Università di Padova.

Yuliya si racconta

My memory is saved into a film camera with a broken lens, fractured in two. Because I do not feel complete anymore. Nobody does. This camera captures the things and people I am terrified of losing: my family and friends, the feeling of future and actual belonging somewhere, being at home, as if taking a photo will save these from the inevitable.

Partly I am still a 22-year-old student pursuing my wildest ambitions while another part is a displaced person under temporary protection. My life is scattered into teeny tiny coloured glass pieces and continues to spread around the world. I leave a part of me wherever I go, meeting new people, creating core memories, working, trying to find simple pleasures every day, like seeing an airplane in the Italian sky, because I can no longer see it in Ukraine. I mean, I can, but it will be my last airplane, for sure. Many people are scared to come up and talk to me or anyone else from Ukraine, contributing to stigma and the feeling of isolation. Another part of me wakes up to air-raid alarms and the smell of withered flowers from smbd`s funeral, she donates and talks about the russian war of aggression, she volunteers, she rebuilds houses in the north of Ukraine, she cries her heart and tears out everytime Russians kill and destroy what is dear to her and 44M other people, she hears out people's stories when spending 2-4 days travelling back home. She sees graves in the schoolyard in her dreams. She asks her 86-year-old grandma to hide in the shelter, while granny is standing on the balcony watching the sky, but she stands still and smiles instead. She listens to her mom, navigating her in what to do in case the parents die. She hears the sound of explosions and can tell apart all the kinds of weapons Russians use against civilians. She is tired of explaining to everybody why her life matters, why helping Ukraine matters and what is wrong with Russian great imperialistic culture. She knows that eventually she will come home. That makes her keep making plans and living the life despite the derealisation she feels quite often.

La città di Yuliya