Entering the Fifth Year of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, Harris Experts Paint a Portrait of Courage, Devastation

A few days before the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Khrystyna Dmytryshyn, MA in Public Policy‘26, asked her friends in Ukraine via Instagram what they would tell an international audience at this moment in the war.

Several wanted to convey that their lives unfold in relative normalcy during the day, said Dmytryshyn, a Ukrainian national who came to the University of Chicago in September 2025 from the Kyiv School of Economics. Her friends abroad attend classes, do homework, buy coffee on the way to work or the gym, stay busy, and try “to focus on the beautiful moment,” Dmytryshyn said. Then she recited directly from a friend’s message.

“’Yet as evening approaches, the big black hole gets closer’,” Dmytryshyn read, “‘and we go to bed wondering if we will make it through the night. We can’t sleep, not because we have a pressing deadline, but because of the sounds of the Russian missiles and drones. If we have an exam, a deadline, a work meeting the next morning, and if we were lucky not to be wounded or killed, we get ready and proceed with life.’”

Dmytryshyn shared her perspectives at a Harris event, co-sponsored by the Harris School of Public Policy, the Center for Eastern European and Russian/Eurasian Studies (CEERES), and the Ukrainian Society at the University of Chicago, that marked four years since Russia’s invasion. Two Harris professors who taught in Kyiv in 2023 — Scott Gehlbach, the Elise and Jack Lipsey Professor of Political Science, and Konstantin Sonin, the John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor — joined her. Institute of Politics Pritzker Fellow Dasha Zarivna and Darya Tsymbalyuk, Assistant Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at UChicago — one of very few departments in the U.S. offering a robust study of Ukrainian culture, history and language — also participated in the panel discussion.

Their insights illuminated the reality of Ukrainians’ harrowing existence and provided important context on Europe’s largest conflict since World War II.

“There’s a real interest among folks at Harris in conflict per se and understanding its roots, its potential ends,” Gehlbach said. He added that a number of Harris faculty and students have connections to Ukraine, which creates a personal, deep interest in — and academic intersections with — the war. “And obviously we’re dealing with the largest conflict in Europe since the end of World War II. It would be intellectual negligence on our part to not be engaged in some way.”

Unissued Diplomas’ and drones

Like many of her peers in Ukraine, said Dmystryshyn, 22, she does not know what a carefree youth is. For more than half her life, Ukraine has been defending itself against Russia.

“Instead of attending parties, young Ukrainians attend the funerals of their friends,” she said. “Instead of watching sunrises after a night in a club, we might be lucky to leave a shelter when the sun appears on the horizon. And instead of celebrating the graduation of our friends from universities, we commemorate the anniversary of their death.”

For three days in the Keller Center lobby, a photo exhibit did precisely that, though it pursued a broader objective.

“Unissued Diplomas” honored the memory of 19 Ukrainian students killed in Russia’s invasion. Black and white portraits were accompanied by short biographies of each student. One of more than 300 “Unissued Diplomas” exhibits across 40 countries, its goal is to remind the world of the price Ukrainians pay daily in their fight for freedom. A placard urges viewers to use a QR code to learn more and organize an “Unissued Diplomas” exhibit in their community.

Gehlbach, who has been studying the region for years and taught at the Kyiv School of Economics in 2023, has been impressed by Ukrainians’ bravery and innovation in defending their country.

“They’ve fought with courage, even as Ukraine’s allies and the rest of the world have not always shown the same sort of bravery,” Gehlbach said. Enormous shifts have occurred in U.S. policy, especially since the 2024 election, and Europe’s support seems precarious, he added.

A crucial turning point occurred in recent months. For the first time since the invasion on February 24, 2022, Russia is losing more soldiers than it can recruit. The high casualties Ukraine inflicts present a challenge for Russia’s recruitment of soldiers, a trend exemplified by the military’s increased bonuses offered for enlisting, Gehlbach noted.

He also observed that each country is taking distinctly different approaches to the war. Russia relies on overwhelming manpower. Ukraine is using more technology, most notably drones.

“You have a large part of the Ukrainian economy and society that are mobilizing to produce technology that allows Ukraine to fight this war,” Gehlbach said, “even though it’s at this enormous manpower disadvantage.”

By the Grim Numbers

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the number of soldiers killed, wounded or missing from both sides totals about 1.8 million (1.2 million Russian and 600,000 Ukrainian), according to the Associated Press. The AP also reports that, according to the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission, of 14,999 civilians killed in Ukraine, at least 763 were children. Nearly 6 million Ukrainian civilians have left the country. About 3.7 million have been forced from their homes and gone elsewhere in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, foreign military aid to Ukraine dropped 13 percent last year, compared to the annual average between 2022 and 2024, according to the AP. Despite that reduction, the Center for Strategic and International Studies reports that Russian forces have gained less than 1.5 percent of Ukrainian territory since the start of 2024. Entering the fifth year of conflict the invaders occupy about 20 percent of Ukraine, which is about the size as Texas.

The casualties, displacement, destruction, length of the conflict and a turbulent news environment in the United States have pushed the war from the West’s consciousness, Dmytryshyn and others said. Russia’s disinformation campaign, harsh treatment of Ukrainians in occupied territories, and the indoctrination of young children are erasing Ukraine history and culture, they said, leading to an erosion of critical thinking.

“In geopolitical discussions, Ukraine often gets abstracted into a territory that can be swapped or divided,” said Tsymbalyuk, who also has authored a book, “Ecocide in Ukraine,” about environmental damages of the war. “It’s very easy for many outside Ukraine to talk about Ukrainian lands as a geopolitical abstraction, but we should not forget people who actually live in those lands and whose lives are directly impacted by the Russian occupation and war.”

The truth is that life in occupied Ukraine is excruciating, Tsymbalyuk said. International relief organizations don’t work in occupied regions, she said, and those Ukrainians who have escaped the regions often decline to publicly discuss life there for fear that relatives who remain will be targeted for abuse.

“The horror stories constantly come up,” she said. Sexual violence, beatings, torture and executions are part of Ukrainians’ existence in the occupied territories. Those who stay do so because they have family in the regions, own property there or cannot afford to leave.

“This is really a space of complete fear,” she said. “People are afraid to speak to each other. People are afraid to go outside.”

Like Dmytryshyn, Zarivna, a former advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said that night is the most fearful time for her, even in Chicago. (Her parents and daughter live in Kyiv.)

The air raid siren “screws into my mind like some sadistic dentist who is drilling and drilling my skull,” she said.

In a broader sense, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine marks the moment when the world order as we knew it began to deconstruct and usher in the start of World War III, she said.

“This war won’t be conventional,” Zarivna added. “The battles will take part in the informational field, cyberspace, in the destruction of state institutions and authorities.”

Russia already is effectively waging the war on those fronts, and all autocratic countries are watching, absorbing lessons, and composing their own playbooks, Zarivna said.

“If the peace will be favorable to Russia and if it will be unjust,” she said, “it will start their chain reaction of aggressions and invasion all over the world.”

And Russia will continue invading and swallowing up other countries, she said.

“Their war machine is already at its highest, and they simply cannot stop it,” Zarivna added. “They won’t stop it because this is a question of the survival of Putin’s regime.”

Another broad consequence that carries personal resonance with Zarivna is the estimated 20,000 Ukrainian children who have been deported and/or forcibly displaced by the war, as reported by the Ukrainian government. From May of 2023 to September 2025, Zarivna was Chief Operating Officer of Bring Kids Back UA, an initiative to return every Ukrainian child abducted by Russia.

“Picture almost 20,000 Ukrainian children who were simply stolen,” she said, adding that these children are “brainwashed” and prepared to fight against Ukraine. By destroying their national identity, Russians destroy children’s internal foundations, creating the ideal future soldiers of the empire—children without a past and without a future, she said.

“They are very easy to manipulate,” Zarivna said. “They’re very easy to die for every idea.”

Sanctions ‘not nearly enough’

Sanctions, an early and enduring tactic to pressure Russia to end the war, have made daily life in Russia more difficult and damaged Russia’s economy, Sonin said. Sonin, who has had his own run-ins with Putin’s autocracy and who has been convicted in absentia for alleged crimes against Russia, was skeptical that the tactic alone would collapse the entire country’s economy and stop the war.

The sanctions have a gradual effect (allowing Russia’s government to adjust) and are uneven and difficult to enforce, Sonin said. Also, significant illegal trading has emerged since the sanctions were imposed.

The Russian economy likely will continue to erode, but it is far less dire than it was in the 1980s, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Sonin said. Previous regime implosions — he referred to the ends of the Russian imperial and German governments more than 100 years ago and the Soviet Union collapse about 40 years ago — resulted from political and government collapse.

“That doesn’t mean that sanctions don’t work,” he said. “Even the smallest sanction works. One sanction on one business transaction, it’s still less money, less missiles falling on Ukrainian cities, less bombs, less money to pay soldiers who go to Ukraine.”

But, he added, current sanctions are “not nearly enough,” and it remains important to continue pressing government officials in the U.S. and Europe to impose more sanctions.

How to respond

As complicated and heart wrenching as the Russia-Ukraine war has been, responses to it must be multi-faceted, the experts maintain. Those start with a widespread understanding of Ukraine, its history and culture; keeping alive and spreading the stories of the war and its impact.

Also, continued and increased military aid for Ukraine is essential, experts said. Calling elected officials to express concerns and encourage them to act is surprisingly effective, said Gehlbach, a former Congressional aide. The experts also maintain that college students everywhere, who hold more power than they might think, must advocate for a just peace and accountability from Russia. Dmytryshyn and other Ukrainian students recently organized the Ukrainian Society at the University of Chicago, which can be found on Instagram at @uchicago.ukraine. Gehlbach encouraged financial support for the Kyiv School of Economics.

To emphasize why Ukraine winning the war is so important, Zarivna referred to a 2004 speech by one of UChicago’s most prominent former instructors, former President Barack Obama.

In the speech, given at the Democratic National Convention, Obama decried “pundits (who) like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States,” and declared, “We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”

Zarivna said, “the essential idea of this country is precisely in the word united — united states of democracy, united states of freedom, united states of justice. These are exactly the same values we are standing for in Ukraine,” she said.

“These are the values we are ready to die for.”