Tymofiy Mylovanov
President Kyiv School of Economics
145 Kyiv physics-mathematics high school
Kyiv School of Economics
Ukraine
May 5, 2026
A ballistic missile struck steps away from our student Myroslava Borysiuk’s building in Kyiv. The blast blew out every window in her apartment.
She already survived the siege of Mariupol in 2022 — saw her own home destroyed and bodies on the streets. Now it happened again.
Myroslava is a third-year law student at KSE. She is from Mariupol. In 2022 she fled the siege with one backpack containing scissors, a chocolate bar, nasal spray and water.
She spent a year in Ireland working as a bartender. Then she came back to Ukraine because she wanted to be among her own people.
Her mother was against it. All her relatives were against it. Myroslava insisted. She had dreamed of a legal career and of Kyiv since she was 12 — told everyone she would move there one day.
She entered KSE on a law scholarship in 2023 and says she became smarter here and learned to see the world through the eyes of a lawyer.
That night she was sleeping next to her mother, who had come from abroad for two weeks. At 2:33 the explosion hit. Everything turned white.
She pulled a blanket over herself because there was nothing else she could do. They ran down the stairs barefoot in slippers.
The door in the stairwell was broken off, it blocked the exit. A neighbor in his underwear holding a two-month-old baby kicked it open with his feet. Russians killed a woman who had done yoga and pilates with Myroslava.
Russians killed an 11-year-old boy in the building. Myroslava and her mother attended his funeral. Flowers and children’s toys still lie near the building.
There are still no windows in the apartment. Myroslava sleeps in her jacket. Two weeks without normal sleep because the PTSD and anxiety from Mariupol that she spent three years treating with a therapist and antidepressants have returned.
Her mother, who had not heard explosions for three years, told her after the strike to drop out and leave.
KSE offered her temporary housing in a co-living space in Obolon while the windows are replaced. Her academic director supported her personally.
Myroslava says the university was the only place that made her feel she was not alone.
One year left until her law degree. Myroslava is not leaving. She says: “One year left. I will have a diploma. I don’t want to lose that.”
KSE supports students who study during the war. If you want to help students like Myroslava — link in the comments.
Link to donate:
https://foundation.kse.ua/en/donate-to-educate/?utm_source=edufl42
Thank you for this impressive post on this very impressive young woman! She will be a great lawyer because she has lived through so much hardship herself already at such a young age! As strong as a Ukrainian! All my admiration. And such a post is so supportive and makes the hardship your students are enduring so touchable! Thank you.
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Russians tortured Oleh (name changed for security) for two weeks — stabbed his leg with a bayonet, cut his ear, ruptured his spleen and after surgery forced him to “confess” he had fallen himself. They punished him for passing SBU coordinates of enemy equipment. Oleh spent four years under occupation in Kherson Oblast -Hromadske.
He stayed when all his family left and refused to take a Russian passport. In August 2022 Chechens drove him and several men into a field, stripped them and lined them up for execution. The young Chechen ordered to fire shot into the ground instead. The naked Ukrainians were left in the field and local shepherds found Oleh and helped him get home.
Five times they threw him into a basement, beat him and released him. Then his mother, returning from Poland, stopped at a checkpoint and the SBU asked for her help. Oleh began passing information about equipment locations and strike coordinates. Occupiers checked his phone, found suspicious messages with his mother and understood. Searches, interrogations and torture followed.
Without a Russian passport and without a Ukrainian one — stolen during searches — Oleh was turned back from occupation twice. On the third attempt, two hours before his scheduled appearance at the military commissariat, volunteers drove him out through Belarus. At the border he said he was going to his mother in Poland. His mother was already waiting in Odesa Oblast.
She saw her son for exactly one hour and twenty minutes. After crossing the final checkpoint in Odesa Oblast he was detained by TCC soldiers and taken to the Bolhrad RTCC. Lawyers secured his release and Oleh received a summons to appear in 14 days.
He is not going to evade service. On the train back to Ukraine he met soldiers who told him about their brigade. He told his mother: “I did not go serve the orcs. But I will serve here.”
(Photo changed for the security of the article’s subject)
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