Yuri Zinchenko, Ukrainian Lawyer Educational Fund

WWII refugees in black and white look at us from grainy photos with a mute challenge:

“What would we have done?”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made that challenge real, and present. Millions of Ukrainians are displaced. Lives have been lost with surviving futures tossed into uncertainty.

None of us has the ability to stop the war, to repair the harm. What we can do, though, is lift up a few, preserve a family’s future, and contribute to Ukraine’s resurgence.

Last year, joining millions, Yuri Zinchenko fled Kharkiv with his wife, Vitalina,

and their three-year-old daughter, Anastasia. He was a lawyer who had worked with Ukraine’s national bank, a large pharmaceutical company and a private firm. Dedicated to his community, he also taught law.

His journey from the destruction of Kharkiv to the United States was made possible by many who answered the question, “What would we have done?” He and his family now live in Whitefish, Montana. He gets by with whatever work he can do.

He is a skilled lawyer, although limited by having a law degree and license from a jurisdiction wrecked by war. To contribute his skills to rebuilding Ukraine, he needs to earn a Master of Law, an LLM, from a U.S. law school. That degree will enable him to assist an NGO or international corporation engaged in reconstructing his homeland.

The University of California, Irvine, has an excellent LLM program. When contacted about Yuri, the school acted quickly, admitting him and giving him a substantial scholarship. The Dean of the program explained that it was evident that for Yuri, this degree will be transformative. It will open doors and create a future for him that, in turn, will benefit many in Ukraine.

The fundraising target is $50,000, which will go for housing and tuition and fees.

Your donation will be tax deductible. It will go to an account specifically set up for the Zinchenkos, through the Whitefish United Methodist Church, in Whitefish, Montana.

The church will disperse the funds to the University of California Irvine for the balance of tuition and housing expenses. One hundred percent of the money will go to the family and their needs. This money is transparently managed by both a committee treasurer and an outside accountant.

Here is Yuri’s story, in his words:

Paradigm broken

It is often said that the older we get, the more we reflect on what has been done, what could have been done, and what needs to be done. That three-part paradigm shattered with the first missile on February 24, 2022. Mine became “two-part,” simply; "Before and After.”

I had a rich and fulfilling life in my country that had wrested itself from the grit of the former Soviet Union. I received a scholarship and entered the best law school in the country, graduating with honors at twenty-one.

Law energized me. Simultaneously, I served as general counsel in a law

firm and as general counsel for one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the country. Committed to giving back, I devoted four years to teaching law at my alma mater, Ukraine’s top law school.

I met a beautiful young woman, another lawyer, who became my wife and blessed us with a baby girl. One paradigm that did not shatter was that presented by the birth of Anastasia. Like any father anywhere, my personal time was taken by this infant and replaced by immeasurable happiness and joy. Her smiles, her first steps, they are etched into me.

Surviving even war’s darkness, the love of a small child is priceless. Our Anastasia remains even today a tableau of possibilities, standing on whatever security we can provide. She stands, though, on shifting earth. My job, my wife’s job, is to steady that for her. This brings me to the rupture.

Life Shattered

The morning of February 24, 2022, it all splintered.

Only six am and my phone screen was crowded with texts. There were dozens of missed calls, messages and notifications. Anxiety overwhelmed me. The view from our apartment once opened to a beautiful panoramic picture of Kharkiv, one of Ukraine’s most elegant cities.

That morning, there was no familiar picture of charming streets, of a community waking to a future. There was dread. I felt it. Explosions rumbled in different parts of the city. Deep, dark echoes of violence echoed off apartment buildings. Areas of Kharkiv were on fire. Thousands of cars filled the streets, rushing to the west.

The war. It was at our doors, shaking our windows, sending fear through all of us. Within an hour, we joined our fleeing neighbors. Our car was taking us to a suburban area, to the house of relatives, to somewhere safe.

The horrors of war we read in the works of Ernest Hemingway and Erich Maria Remarque cannot compare with what you personally experience when you become an unwitting and unwilling character in someone’s war novel.

It is impossible to convey the fear sown in the souls of Ukrainians when rockets burrow in the windows of neighboring apartments; when everything that was created by decades of hard work is destroyed; when everything that you aspired to, achieved and tried, is cleared from the pages of your book of life with the swipe of a dictator’s hand.

Add to that the visceral fear of a father, impotent in the face of an enemy that could fall from the sky at any time, unable to forecast a safe day, unable to imagine what life would now be.

The boundaries first few days simply disappeared. They became one. The goal was to survive, not dream, not hope. In daylight, we spent time looking for food and medicine for our parents. I built a shelter underground, trying to create minimal security in conditions of wholesale insecurity.

At night in war, if you are lucky and you dream, it’s short. The rest of the night, you lay with eyes or ears open, listening for death. Outside, close or far, shells explode, rockets fly and aircraft scream. Each artillery shell makes window glass tremble as if it knows as if it can feel the danger. I spent nights in the same position: on my side with my back to the window. I did that so that if that glass gave up and shattered, it would find me and not my loved ones.

Protecting children in war is more than providing physical safety. We did not want our

Anastasia, a child who was not yet three, to know war’s terror. We stayed positive. We turned everything that was happening into one big game. The incessant sirens were some kind of strange music, and the roar of shells became fireworks like those we saw on the New Year.

Flight to Safety

The hardest task in the following months -- as we moved from place to place -- was to answer her simple questions: “Why can't we return home? Where are all my friends?”

Those questions innocently exposed the heart of the problem. We had no home. Her friends were gone.

We had become refugees, leaving home with little in search of safety. The following months were a race against random violence when no matter how far you ran, rockets and shells still found your address and reminded you that it was simply impossible to hide. They would find you. They would find your wife and daughter. They had already killed your life as you knew it. They were coming for the rest of it.

Paradigm Shift

No matter how terrible the war was, if we lived, if we could protect who we were, we had faith that we would emerge stronger. I found no time for fear. I had no patience with self-pity. I could not resign my fate to Putin.

As a father, and a husband, I had only a sense of duty. I had a deep responsibility for the fate, for the future, of our daughter and the other child we might have, our family.

It became clear that if we wanted our child to grow up in safety, without psychological trauma, we had to flee. The Hebrews did it, leaving Egypt. We could do it.

As all fortunate refugees throughout history, we found our place. America has become our refuge of freedom, security and tranquility. We have opportunities. We are protected by the rule of law. We live in relative stability, surrounded by helping hands.

My life’s paradigm was shattered, but not lost. It was reformed. The war helped me distinguish better the “meaningful” from the “meaningless.” One constant that remained “meaningful,” that survived this war, is my love for the law. The war gave me a stark understanding of the consequences of losing it, the consequences of living by a politician’s impulses.

I am more dedicated than ever to supporting and spreading the benefits of the rule of law. I know an LLM from UCI will help me be a part of Ukraine’s reconstruction, to serve as a bridge

between the world's largest democracy and a re-emerging democratic Ukrainian society.

With this degree, I can help rebuild what was destroyed.

Maybe, with your help, the end of this war novel I am living will be inspiring and healing.