With her nation’s flag adorning the lectern, 19-year-old Ukrainian law student Khrystyna Borshchuk delivered powerful remarks on the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of her country during a presentation Monday night at Linn Memorial United Methodist Church in Fayette.

Borshchuk is attending Central Methodist University for the Spring semester as part of the Global Undergraduate Exchange Program (UGRAD) program, a U.S. Department of State-funded initiative that sponsors undergraduate students from developing countries to study in the U.S. for a semester. One of her goals while here is talking about what is happening in her home country.

“I would like to express my deepest gratitude to those who gave most precious, their lives, for my country, for my people, and for me. If not for the soldiers on the front line who defend our country, I would be dead,” she told the several dozen in attendance Monday night.

“I’m here not to persuade you. I’m here to show you facts. And I’m showing you what is happening,” she said.

Borshchuk said she has lived half of her life in war, explaining that the incursion by Russia into her country three years ago was not the beginning. The war, she asserted, did not even begin in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea following Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity; but has been ongoing for more than 300 years.

While most of Russia’s invasion is focused on the eastern side of Ukraine, Borshchuk described how pretty much all of Ukraine is under attack by Russian rockets and drones, particularly Lviv in the west, where she attends her university. Many nights, she is awakened by air alarms. She grabs a go-bag with a sleeping bag, clothes, a coat, and other provisions and waits in the corridor of her apartment with other tenants until it is safe to go to an underground shelter. There, she often works on homework throughout the night while getting only a few hours of sleep before returning to the rigors of law school the next day. She and others in the shelter keep track of rocket trajectories through the social media app Telegram.

“The whole country suffers from airstrikes. We have air alarms, which is something that every Ukrainian experiences every day,” Borshchuk explained during an interview with the Advertiser on Thursday.

She said that in the early days of the war, life was chaotic as the people there did not know what was happening. Three years later, knowledge is quickly disseminated over the internet about what is headed their way, be it a rocket or a drone, and where it is likely to strike.

“Usually, it is a lucky day when you have an air alarm for only an hour or 30 minutes,” she said. “It can get to three, four, or five hours, and you just sit in the basement. You just want to sleep.”

Amid photos of carnage captured throughout war-torn Ukraine during her presentation on Monday, Borshchuk displayed a photograph of a man, his wife, and their three daughters, the youngest only seven years old, standing in front of the university she attends. The image quickly changed to the man remaining in color while his family was greyed out. His wife and daughters were killed when a missile struck their apartment building in the middle of the night.

“Is that saving people,” she asked, referencing the Russian propaganda surrounding the incursion.

Borshchuk described atrocities that have taken place across Ukraine, including the raping of women and children, the torture and burial in mass graves of civilians.

“As a law student, I know what is war. I know what is international armed conflict. Legally, this isn’t international armed conflict. Do these people look like soldiers to you?

“We don’t want to occupy Russia. We don’t want to occupy anyone,” she concluded. “We want to stay in our territory in peace and just be the territory that we have in 1991. We just want to have the right to be called Ukrainians without anyone questioning us.”

Following her presentation, Borshchuk asked those in attendance to pray for the people of Ukraine and to light candles in their memory. She asked them to pray for her best friend’s father. “I’m so thankful for defending me, my family, my friends. I’m so thankful to say that I’m here because of him.”