In the news: 7 Pitt people on Ukraine

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Pitt experts and community members, including a Pitt professor on the ground and another who lost a sibling in the conflict, have offered their stories and insights to audiences worldwide. Here’s a list of articles to get you caught up.

Western retailers’ withdrawal from Russia may be fueling Putin’s larger narrative

Tymofiy Mylovanov, president of the Kyiv School of Economics and associate professor in the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Economics, told The New York Times, “[Shutdowns from retailers are] completely consistent with what Putin is telling them,” said. “It’s sending the message that the West is nasty.”

On Ukraine’s quick turn to a war economy

Mylovanov, who is also an advisor to President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration and a former economy minister, described Ukraine’s swift transition into a wartime economy to The Wall Street Journal: “Now plants that made sweaters are making weapons.”

Read more from Mylovanov in Vox and Bloomberg.

Professor loses her brother during Russian shelling

“My brother was the helper that people find in a crisis,” Katya Hill, an associate professor in the Department of Communication Science and Disorders in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, told CNN. Her brother, Jimmy Hill, died March 17 in Chernihiv. He’d gone to be with his Ukrainian partner during her treatment for multiple sclerosis. 

What Central Asian countries have to lose

In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, an associate professor in Pitt’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and director of the Center for Governance and Markets, wrote, “As the United States and Europe continue to add sanctions against Russia, Central Asian countries face reminders of how dependent their economies and societies are on Moscow.”

Music and broadcast in Ukraine

“Ukraine doesn’t do rah-rah-rah patriotism,” Department of Music Chair Adriana Helbig told The Atlantic. “They’re not flag wavers — they have a ‘Do what you want; leave me alone’ kind of attitude.” But “Putin has created his worst-case scenario. He’s unifying Ukraine,” she said.

On Ukrainian and Russian cultures in Pittsburgh

Nancy Condee, director of the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies within Pitt’s University Center for International Studies, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “Here in Pittsburgh, the Russian and Ukrainian intelligentsia — until this moment at least — have often told the same political jokes, laughed at the same old-fashioned Soviet songs, watched the same films.”

Ukrainian and Russian roommates share their perspectives on the conflict

Roman Koshovnyk, a Pitt economics doctoral candidate, expressed his concern for his family back in Ukraine, telling WTAE, “This is a whole scale war against an independent society, independent country,” said Koshovnyk. “Russians are our brothers, but brothers are not trying to kill you.” 

His roommate, Mikhail Zavarzin, who is Russian and is also in Pitt’s economics doctoral program, said of the invasion, “It’s just heartbreaking to watch this unfold.”

— Kara Henderson