Before Russia's military invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Tetiana Fliak's hometown of Lviv, Ukraine, was considered a cultural hub known for picturesque Western European-style architecture.
Since the invasion, Lviv has endured Russian airstrikes and wartime deprivation.
"In the last three years, we haven't been living peacefully because of the attacks," Fliak says. "There has been changes in electricity that we wouldn't have for days, or would only have for a couple of hours in a week."
In 2019, Fliak returned to Ukraine after spending a year in the Kansas City area as an exchange student at Shawnee Mission Northwest. She still keeps up with her American friends, and says her time in Kansas left a major impact on her.
"I have a best (American) friend who I still speak to almost every week, and we're very close," she says.
Fliak tells KCUR's Up To Date that she would love to return to Kansas City someday.
"I miss my host family so much. I miss our neighbors," Fliak says. "My teachers, they still write me on Facebook and support me... it warms my heart."
Fliak is now a licensed psychologist in Ukraine. She splits her time between Lviv and Warsaw, Poland, where she's pursuing her masters degree.
As a psychologist, she's noticed a shift in the Ukrainian people's mindset since the war began. People are faster to make major life decisions like getting married, buying homes, having kids, or getting divorced.
"When death is so close every day to you, you want to make the most of it, the most of the days that you have," she says.
While Fliak loves her American friends, she says it's hard not to feel angry and sad about the recent reversal of U.S. support for Ukraine. She tells KCUR's Up To Date that many Ukrainians feel betrayed by President Trump.
"At the United States, at the people who chose President Trump, and at the things he had been saying and doing, people are very disappointed," Fliak says.
Fliak is especially upset about Trump's recent statements falsely blaming Ukraine for the war.
"It is not true," Fliak says. "Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014. It had invaded Ukraine in 2014, and then started a full scale invasion in 2022. If Russia would want to end this war, they would."
And the war is very much still going on. During Russian attacks on Lviv, Fliak's family goes to a shelter — sometimes for a whole night — and then returns to work in the morning.
Fliak also wants Americans to know how the U.S. spends money in Ukraine. "When you read, 'We are given some amount of money,' we are given weapons as the equivalent of (that) money," she says.
Three years into Russia's war, and with U.S. government support seemingly gone, Fliak says it's becoming harder to have hope for Ukraine's future.
"I'm not feeling optimistic, although I try," she says. "I wish the war was over, but not on Russia's terms."
- Tetiana Fliak, Ukrainian psychologist and former exchange student at Shawnee Mission Northwest High School
