{"id":102022,"date":"2022-03-02T10:53:31","date_gmt":"2022-03-02T15:53:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/busm\/?p=102022"},"modified":"2022-03-02T14:04:27","modified_gmt":"2022-03-02T19:04:27","slug":"reaction-crisis-in-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/2022\/03\/02\/reaction-crisis-in-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"Reaction: Crisis in Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Peace
Boston peace march in support of Ukraine. Credit Anna Belkina<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

BUSM Community Members Share Perspectives<\/span><\/h3>\n

The news that Russian tanks, troops and aircraft had crossed into Ukraine last Thursday did not surprise those in the School of Medicine with ties to one or both countries. It did provoke anger about what they saw as a senseless war as well as concern for the family and colleagues they knew on both sides of the border.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always thought he (Russian President Vladimir Putin) was an SOB right from the beginning,\u201d said Konstantin Kandror, PhD, a BUSM professor of biochemistry and medicine. \u201cIt (the invasion) surprised me only because it seems like a suicidal move on his part.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kandror left the then-Soviet Union in 1991 when he received a working visa from Harvard Medical School as a visiting lecturer. He has been here ever since and is now a U.S. citizen. Kandror said he no longer has family in Russia, but he has many friends there.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone is so depressed. It\u2019s difficult times for those who don\u2019t support Putin,\u201d he said. \u201cIt makes me sick to even try to analyze his thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kandror urged some measure of caution in dealing with Putin.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that the West should leave Putin a way out. Indeed, if Hitler had an atomic bomb back in 1945, he was unlikely to commit suicide,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"map<\/p>\n

Maksym \u201cMax\u201d Bartashevskyy, 24, is a first-year medical student who came to the U.S. from Ukraine at the age of 3 with his mother. Growing up he would alternate between New York and Lviv, a city of over 722,000 that is about 50 miles from the Polish border in western Ukraine. Bartashevskyy stayed with his grandparents and socialized with his extended family, attending school in both countries.<\/p>\n

\u201cI bounced back and forth until middle school when I was consistently in the U.S.,\u201d he said Friday. He graduated the University of Buffalo and was accepted to BUSM with an expected graduation date of 2025.<\/p>\n

Since the invasion began, he\u2019s been monitoring the constant updates pouring in from overseas and talking to his extended family in Lviv. He said his mother is safe in New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s relatively calm there (in Lviv); Kyiv is where a lot of the attacks are going on now,\u201d Bartashevskyy said. As of Tuesday, the Russian offensive was largely concentrated on Kyiv, and in Ukraine\u2019s second largest city Kharkiv, as well as the region fanning out from Crimea to the south.<\/p>\n

The United Nations estimated that more than 600,000 Ukrainians have now fled to surrounding countries.<\/p>\n

\"Peace
Boston peace march in support of Ukraine. Credit Anna Belkina<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI just spoke with my cousin an hour ago. They\u2019re drafting men between 18 and 60. He says that although some families are fleeing, most are not. They want to stay and defend their country. Many are voluntarily going to the armed forces office and signing up to fight,\u201d said Bartashevskyy.<\/p>\n

\u201cCivilians are carrying guns in the street and making Molotov cocktails,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are ready to defend themselves. Some have sent their families to Poland, but the men remained to fight,\u201d said Bartashevskyy. \u201cAmerica is my home now, but Ukraine is my homeland. It\u2019s frustrating to be sitting here. I haven\u2019t been able to study since the invasion started. I wish I was over there fighting with them or providing medical aid in whatever way I can.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re witnessing history in the making. A small democratic nation is successfully defending itself against a huge authoritarian regime with the largest army in Europe,\u201d said Bartashevskyy, who was worried that a frustrated Russian army was including civilian targets.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Russian military hasn\u2019t made as much progress as they anticipated and now, they\u2019re bombing residential buildings and killing civilians,\u201d he said. \u201cI hope Russia realizes their invasion is failing and turns their military around before more Russian soldiers are sent home in body bags to their mothers. If Putin thinks he\u2019ll be able to take Kyiv, he\u2019s mistaken; they\u2019ll be getting shot at from every window in the capital.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anna Belkina, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of pathology & laboratory medicine and director of the Flow Cytometry Core, left Moscow in 2003 following graduation from medical school to pursue her PhD in the U.S. She still has family and friends there, including her mother, a pediatric surgeon in Moscow.<\/p>\n

Belkina has been in contact with colleagues and friends in Ukraine who are overwhelmed with the tasks they need to do. \u201cThey are worried that the information about the current situation in Ukraine is not reaching the Western media and public,\u201d she said. But Belkina thought the media started catching up to the news over the weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one is buying the Russian propaganda anymore,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Life is constantly interrupted by air raid sirens and the scramble to get to a bomb shelter.<\/p>\n

\u201cMultiple (hospital) units have permanently moved into the basements of the buildings, including obstetrics departments in all major hospitals,\u201d said Belkina.<\/p>\n

Belkina was initially surprised that Russians were targeting civilians along with military personnel, but now, she said, she is \u201cbeyond furious.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are hundreds of casualties, including the elderly and children They are now bombing apartment complexes with non-selective \u2018Grad\u2019 missiles (less accurate, truck-mounted artillery rockets) resulting in dozens of people killed and injured,\u201d said Belkina.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy colleagues and friends who live there have a closer view of how the medical system (in Ukraine) is struggling, especially in Eastern Ukraine where a lot of the infrastructure has been undermined for years,\u201d said Belkina. COVID-19 has only made that worse, she added.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, the medical system will explode — it has to support both military and civilian casualties,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BUSM community members share perspectives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[91],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102022"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102022"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102041,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102022\/revisions\/102041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}