WCEE Director Geneviève Zubrzycki spoke at length (watch the video) with Anna Danylchuk on her popular Youtube channel “Anna from Ukraine” (133,000 subscribers), where the vlogger publishes daily updates on the war in Ukraine. Danylchuk participated in WCEE’s September 2023 NGO Leadership Workshop in Lublin, Poland, representing the Volyn Foundation — an NGO based in Lutsk in Western Ukraine dedicated to the preservation and promotion of historical and cultural heritage.
The interview was watched over 19,000 times in the first 48 hours after posting. It covered WCEE’s key initiatives in response to the Russian Federation’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, including the center’s partnership with The Reckoning Project to document reported war crimes in Ukraine, the WCEE Scholars at Risk Fellowship, NGO Leadership Workshops for Ukrainian civil society leaders, and fellowships for Ukrainian graduate students.
Special focus was given to WCEE’s innovative website that serves as a pedagogical tool and memorial to the victims of the war. Zubrzycki described how to navigate the site’s two interactive maps and digital archive of testimonies collected by The Reckoning Project to learn more about particular incidents and identify patterns of violence against civilians in relation to the movement of Russian forces in Ukraine. “The Troop Movement map gives an important way to visualize the course of the war, in that Russia invading Ukraine leads to civilian casualties and war crimes,” commented Zubrzycki.
Danylchuk commended WCEE’s continued efforts to shed light on the human cost of the war. “After two years of full-scale war, it is really difficult [to maintain Ukrainian visibility], and I am really grateful that the launch of the program reminds [the public] about that, and that the project combines this emotional side with a really professional one,” she remarked.
Professor Zubrzycki concluded the interview by highlighting funding opportunities from WCEE for Ukrainian students to pursue graduate studies at the University of Michigan and reaffirming WCEE’s steadfast support for Ukraine.
