Fifteen months ago, Alina Beskrovna was huddled with her mother and 30 other Ukrainians in a pitch-black basement in Mariupol, as Russian shells rained down and buildings around them collapsed in flames. I didn't know whether she was alive or dead.
Shortly before the Russian invasion, Beskrovna had been my fearless interpreter and appointment fixer when I reported from the port city. An IT specialist with an MBA from Lehigh University, she never imagined the horrors that lay ahead.
Yet this month, against all odds, after an odyssey that required incredible guts and smarts, Beskrovna is preparing to start a two-year program at Harvard's prestigious Kennedy School to obtain a master's degree in international development. She dreamed of attending this program because of its rigorous focus on economic data and practical skills — expertise she wants to use to help rebuild Ukraine after the war ends.
Yet, after overcoming so much — seeing her beautiful city destroyed, losing all her possessions, rescuing her elderly parents, and making it to the United States — Beskrovna still has one huge obstacle to overcome before she can attain her Harvard dream.
Although the Kennedy School has granted her a full-tuition scholarship and a modest living stipend, that amount is far from sufficient to support her and her parents in the Boston metropolitan region, where rents in even the most affordable neighborhoods are astronomical. Getting a job isn't an option, as her Harvard program discourages working the first year because the course is so demanding.
Beskrovna has put together a GoFundMe appeal to help her and her family make it through the first year, after which she may be able to work. By then, her retired electrician father — who speaks no English and recently had a stroke — may also be able to find work.
Beskrovna's current need is urgent. At a time when her country is still struggling to end Russia's brutal invasion, hers is a Ukrainian story that can have a happy ending, with a little help from strangers moved by her courage. I doubt that I could have done what she did to get this far.
Soon after the war started, Beskrovna and her mom, along with their three cats, moved into the basement of a four-story apartment building where a friend lived, joining 31 others. The families brought food supplies from home and slept on pillows or the floor. But soon, with temperatures near freezing, the electricity, water, and gas went out along with the internet. Windows were blocked for safety, so people lived in darkness unless they dared open the basement door.
"Some days there was constant shelling," Beskrovna recalled. "Four or five times they hit so close, it felt it went into your soul."
There were no showers, no water for bathing or brushing their teeth. With no toilet, some of the men built a makeshift outhouse in the yard; the alternative was buckets.
Others risked their lives to bring back polluted well water and boiled it outside for drinking. Food also had to be cooked outside over a fire pit, despite the danger of alerting the Russians to their location. Beskrovna recalled stirring a soup base over the fire as shells fell nearby: "It felt like by continuing to cook, I was taking charge of my fate."
After four weeks under constant attack, Beskrovna and her mom decided to risk driving out of the city with a fellow cellar-dweller whose car was still intact. They had to pass through 16 Russian-controlled checkpoints. "At the first, a soldier asked if I was a sniper because I had calluses on my hand from cooking in the open air," she told me. The men were stripped to search for tattoos the Russians believed would mark them as Nazis.
After making it out of Mariupol, life depended on Beskrovna's ingenuity, online messaging apps, and good Samaritans.
When Beskrovna and her mom finally crossed from Ukraine into Poland — with their three cats in a beach bag — international volunteer vets gave the cats shots and pet carriers. When Beskrovna published on Facebook that she and her mom needed temporary housing, a Danish executive who traveled frequently invited them to share his three-bedroom apartment for two months gratis while she pursued entry to Canada or the United States.
When Beskrovna sought to rescue her father, who was still hiding in Mariupol, she used the Telegram messaging app to find an underground railroad business that was rescuing people still trapped in the city, where the Russians were blocking any travel to the rest of Ukraine. Her father was driven to the Russian border and coached to tell the border guards he was visiting Moscow. Then he had to travel through Russia to Estonia and finally to Warsaw, Poland, where Beskrovna met him and paid her Telegram contact for the job.
Beskrovna is now in Williamsport, Pa., where she and her parents are staying temporarily with her onetime "American parents," whom she had lived with for a year during a high school exchange. She was admitted to the United States under the government's temporary two-year humanitarian parole program for Ukrainians fleeing the war.
I asked her how she managed to overcome one impossible challenge after another. "You don't analyze when you are going through hell," she told me. "I thought only about how to get us out and as far from Russia as possible."
Having escaped hell, Beskrovna is hoping to overcome the last challenge that stands between her and Harvard. She just needs a few more good Samaritans willing to help.
You can contribute to Alina Beskrovna's GoFundMe campaign at www.gofund.me/7b169550.
(COMMENT, BELOW)
Trudy Rubin
Philadelphia Inquirer
(TNS)
Previously:
• 07/11/23: At the NATO summit in Vilnius: Will Biden seize or squander the chance to end Putin's war on Ukraine?
• 04/21/23: The Pentagon documents leak will embolden Putin as he tries to outlast Ukraine
• 03/22/23: The Russian attack on a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone underlines why we must help Ukraine win
• 03/15/23: Will the White House have the courage to propel a Ukrainian victory this year?
• 02/21/23: On the first anniversary of Putin's invasion, Ukraine fights on for its independence and for the security of the West
• 02/17/23: A former Pakistani leader's death, and his wise peace plan that failed
• 02/09/23: Earthquakes killed nearly 12,000 people this week. Three men are partly to blame
• 01/24/23: As Russia murders civilians in Dnipro, why won't NATO send weapons that could end the war?
• 12/28/22: What Zelensky worried about when he addressed a cheering Congress
• 12/13/22: The US-China conflict to watch is the Chip War --- which centers on Taiwan
• 09/14/22: Ukraine scores sudden breakthrough that should energize Western support
• 09/09/22: Queen Elizabeth's death deprives Britain and the world of a rock of stability
• 09/08/22: After Gorbachev's death, Putin wants the world to know he is the 'anti-Gorbi'
• 08/26/22: 6 months after Russia's war vs. Ukraine began, the West still won't give Kiev the weapons to win
• 08/15/22: Ukraine's civilian volunteers work to give aid and rebuild, even as Russia continues to bomb them
• 08/08/22: A trip near the front lines finds Ukrainian troops ready for a battle that could decide the war
• 06/13/22: The critical battles for Ukraine and for America are being fought right here, right now
• 05/02/22: Save Odesa to save the world from hunger and high food prices
• 05/02/22: Bloodless Ukrainian War, not utopian fantasy says one-time largest foreign investor in Russia
• 04/11/22: The only way to end Putin's war crimes
• 03/28/22: Don't let Putin's nuclear and chemical threats stop us from giving Ukraine what it needs
• 03/24/22: An elegy for Mariupol, where I walked six weeks ago. Now razed by Russian bombs
• 03/18/22: Zelensky's brilliant speech should impel Biden and Congress to protect Ukrainian skies
• 03/11/22: Mariupol's bombed maternity hospital exemplifies why NATO should protect Ukraine's skies
• 03/10/22: No 'no-fly zone'? Then NATO must find another way to protect Ukraine's skies
• 03/07/22: The third World War has already started in Ukraine. Europe and the US should wake up
• 03/04/22:Putin must be stopped from turning Kiev into Aleppo
• 03/02/22:Why is Belarus helping Russia invade Ukraine? An explainer on the latest in the conflict
• 02/25/22: What the UN should finally do about Russia
• 02/24/22: Why Putin's Ukraine aggression will change the world --- an explainer on how we got here
• 02/10/22: Ukrainian civilians train for war with cardboard guns: 'We are scared but we are ready
• 01/13/22:Putin wants to reestablish the Russian empire. Can NATO stop him without war?
• 12/10/21: Can Biden and NATO prevent Putin from invading Ukraine? Summit puts it to the test
• 12/02/21: Boris Johnson stirs up new Irish Troubles for his own personal political gains
• 11/22/21: Xi Jinping thinks America is on the rocks. Is he correct?
• 08/18/21: President Biden, get our Afghan allies on evacuation planes
• 08/18/21:The horror of Afghan women abandoned by Biden's troop pullout
• 08/09/21:China is pushing a big COVID-19 lie that makes a new pandemic harder to prevent
• 05/27/21: Punish Belarus leader for Ryanair hijacking before air piracy becomes dictators' new tool
• 04/14/21: Can Beethoven temper the political tensions between US and China?
• 06/01/20: US must stand with Hong Kong against Beijing's efforts to crush its freedoms
• 05/20/20: COVID-19 offers a chance to halt Iran's hostage diplomacy
• 05/21/14: Newscycle spurs visit to country my family fled
• 04/21/14: Blind to Putin's strategy?
• 12/24/13: Obama's Syrian indifference has led to more death and destruction. Meet some real heroes
• 12/13/13: Where liberals have come to love the military
• 12/09/13: The China strategy
• 11/05/13: Return to Iraq is worth a close look
• 10/01/13: Obama's call to Iran: Who was really on the line?
• 09/11/13: How Obama got Syria so wrong
• 07/24/13: It's time for Obama to tell Putin 'nyet'
• 05/15/13: What Russia gave Kerry on Syria --- very little
Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer.