Student leaders organize expert panel to mark one-year anniversary of Ukraine invasion

Roanoke College will observe the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with a panel discussion created to tackle questions about the war’s geopolitical history, far-reaching toll and evolving international debate about reparations, war crimes and other concerns.

The hour-long event will take place at noon on Thursday, Feb. 23, in the Wortmann Ballroom. Questions will be posed by the Public Affairs Society, a student group that spearheaded the event, and by students in the International Relations Program. Questions from the audience are also welcome.

The panel will bring together three faculty members with professional and personal insights into the Ukrainian region:

Martha Kuchar is the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants from Lviv who has preserved strong family and cultural ties to the nation throughout her life. She has a doctorate in Slavic Studies, with publications and research on Eastern European literature and folklore. She’s a professor emerita and a senior lecturer in the English and Communication Studies Department.

Tatyana Munsey is from Dnipro, Ukraine, and has immediate family who were endangered by the fighting. She’s written extensively about Ukrainian and Russian literature. She’s a senior lecturer teaching Russian in the Modern Languages Department.

Rob Willingham is a world history scholar with a research focus on the complex history and politics of Modern Europe including Russia. He is chair of the History Department.

“We’re commemorating this moment because it needs to be commemorated. The lives that have been lost need to be remembered,” Kuchar said. “The sacrifices of the Ukrainian people — who are somehow resisting and who are showing their resilience and their strength throughout — need to be remembered.”

“It’s natural for there to be a certain amount of fatigue with the news a year in,” she said. “The crimes that are being committed against Ukraine mount horrendously day after day and week after week. But we have to keep the resistance alive. This is a war that we absolutely must win. Everyone who has a thinking head agrees that Putin has to be expelled from Ukraine. Otherwise, he will just take this as a license to continue marauding and pillaging and exploiting neighboring lands.”

This week's panel was initiated by student leaders in the Public Affairs Society. The Public Affairs Department, History Department and Honors Program are co-sponsoring the event.

The event will occur one day before the anniversary of the Feb. 24, 2022, invasion of Ukraine’s borders by Russian forces. In the days immediately after the invasion, Roanoke College’s top leader issued a statement of support for Ukraine and its faculty organized a teach-in to help deepen the local conversation about the unfolding conflict.

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The upcoming panel discussion continues the campus’s commitment to elevating awareness and understanding of the war and its impact on the Ukrainian people.

“We’re educators. Our first impulse is to give people the context and the information they need to understand what's going on,” Willingham said. “On a personal level, we’re also seeing something really horrible happening on the world stage. We want to call people’s attention to it and get them to think about it and understand it.”

Ethan Stevenson ’24, treasurer of the Public Affairs Society, said he hoped the campus community would join them at the panel to reflect on the anniversary of the war.

“Our hope is to give people some insight into what has led up to this moment,” said Stevenson, a political science and economics double major. “We wanted to create an opportunity for people to hear from professors with experience and expertise in these issues and see what we can learn together as a community.”

In the days immediately after the invasion of Ukraine, Roanoke College's campus came together for a teach-in with faculty experts to better understand the conflict. That event drew over 200 people.