Abigail Shoyat is a contributor for LINK nky. Igor Shoyat is her brother.
“For me, it is a first: and hopefully a last,” Igor Shoyat said of the Russian invasion in Ukraine Thursday morning.
Shoyat was born in Ukraine in 1996, just five years after the country itself had been reborn through its independence from the USSR. By the age of eight, he had lost both of his parents, and would spend five years in one of the capitol’s orphanages before being adopted by a family from Fort Mitchell, Kentucky.
Shoyat matriculated through Beechwood High School, and, as a member of its marching band, brought home multiple state titles as an All-State trumpet player. In 2017, he moved back to Ukraine, where tensions with Russia had already begun. Relationships between the two countries have teetered for eight years, starting over the status of Crimea in February of 2014.
Shoyat awoke Thursday morning to sirens in Kyiv that sounded around 7 a.m.
“I looked out the windows and was like, what is happening? The stores and streets were packed,” he said.
Shoyat said many people within his circle doubted that Russia would make good on their threats of invasion, and was shocked to see what had transpired.
“Almost everyone that I know here has gotten out of Kyiv,” Shoyat said. “I got up, I got dressed, I went straight over to my girlfriend’s apartment and put her in a car to Lviv.”
Lviv is a small town near the country’s western border with Poland.
“We figure Russia won’t come through Poland because of its membership in the EU,” Shoyat said, “so that is where everyone from Kyiv is heading.”
Public transportation within the capitol has remained operational and was made free of charge per the mayor’s request. However, these lines do not extend out of the region.
Those without cars are scouring online message boards for informal carpools to different parts of the country. Lodging in these destinations is also becoming an issue of scarcity, due to limited capacity and hiked prices.
“It’s as if everyone up and left for West Virginia,” Shoyat said. “And the worst place in Lviv is going for a hundred [American] dollars a night right now.”
Shoyat is aiming to seek refuge in the United States, gifted with something that most other Ukrainians lack: American citizenship. Additionally, his employer is paying for his travel to safety.
For some citizens, leaving is not an option, and neither is joining the country’s fight against the invasion.
“If you’re out walking, they [the military] can pick you up off the street and enlist you,” Shoyat said. “They’re giving machine guns to the public. People are in a panic.”
Ukraine has a large cultural divide between two generations: one that has lived under communist regime and one that has participated only in the country’s rediscovered democratic state.
After capitalism was restored, a large number of the elderly began to experience homelessness. Some of Shoyat’s older relatives speak fondly of the financial equality the USSR had brought them.
“I can’t relate to that,” Shoyat said. “The younger generation, we want to modernize like the United States.”
But despite differing views, “no one wanted this,” Shoyat said.
Late Thursday night, Shoyat was solidifying plans to travel to the western side of the country and was confident in his ability to make it to the United States: a place where he has an established support system and already speaks the language.
