Ukrainian Bush School professor discusses the war and her experience evacuating the country
Kateryna Shynkaruk says Ukraine’s success is “very encouraging, but it is expected”
WASHINGTON, D.C. (KBTX) - Following months of attacks, the war in Ukraine continues, but there’s been a major turn of events. Ukrainian troops say they have forced Russia into defense, regaining thousands of square miles of territory.
Kateryna Shynkaruk, Senior Lecturer at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service in Washington, D.C., joined First News at Four to share her perspective on what Ukrainian people are feeling as the war continues.
Shynkaruk taught at universities in Kyiv and worked as the lead local expert on internal politics and parliamentary affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.
In early March of 2022, Shynkaruk was forced to leave the country and go to Romania. In July she returned to Kyiv to find that though the country was still at war, the situation had improved.
There were no longer “gunman standing in front of the windows on my apartment building,” she explained.
Shynkaruk finds that media coverage of the counteroffensive portrays its successes as surprising, but for Ukrainians it’s a different story.
“It’s very encouraging, but it is expected, given how the moods among the people and among the military have been throughout these six months. So this was something that had been long-awaited.”
As the war reaches this turning point, Shynkaruk believes Ukrainians have mixed feelings, “of obviously mourning the losses, but also a gratitude for the heroism of those sacrificing their lives to liberate Ukraine’s lands, and there is an overall sentiment that these things are going in the direction they meant to go.”
Even though they are not as closely connected to the front line, there is somewhat of a shift of the moods of Russian citizens.
“I don’t think there moods are changing as quickly and as dramatically as we would want them to, but there’s also quite a visible shift in more questions being asked,” revealed Shynkaruk.
Watch the full interview in the player above.
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