(Note: Greg Brock is an independent researcher/writer. He is a retired professor from the Georgia Southern University School of Business.)
Recently, I went on a group tour of Ukraine to visit some non-governmental organizations that are helping with the war effort in a variety of ways, including drone production, food for defenders and helping children from destroyed families.
In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and began occupying more of the country, starting the current phase of the war, the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II. The war has resulted in a refugee crisis and hundreds of thousands of deaths.
We visited several organizations in two major cities – Lviv and Kyiv. However, the most moving experience was not in these two cities but in the town of Chernihiv, north of Kyiv, and an outlying village – Yahidne.
In 2022, the Russian army surrounded Chernihiv, but never took it. Yahidne, a village of 400, was occupied for the month of March in 2022 before being liberated.
Some residents were shot on site as the Russian soldiers came in. About 360 were rounded up and forced into a school basement – standing room only – for 27 days. No toilets or water faucets. A few died and remained in a corner of the basement as the Russian soldiers refused to allow burial.
Another corner had a bucket for a toilet that was the only choice unless you waited until the one hour allowed out in the school yard once a day. Houses were vandalized, randomly burned and cattle shot.
Russian soldiers had their base on the ground floor of the school so were very aware of the suffering in the basement beneath them.
Villagers wrote the names of those initially murdered and those who died during the occupation on the basement walls in the hopes that they would not be forgotten.
Now, in 2026 the village is rebuilding and the school site is being turned into a memorial with a sign in English with a QVC code.
If you can’t travel to Ukraine but would like to help, go to balakun.org and info@enginprogram.org. Ukrainians want to learn English and seek Zoom connections. The sites listed will connect Americans who want to help.