Ana Vnukova, of Kyiv, escaped Ukraine on day 10 of the war.
“Russians were close to Kyiv, and I had only one small bag with me,” she said. “I went to Poland and spent three months there.”
She is now one of eight fully funded Ukrainian lawyers, sponsored by CILE, who arrived in August at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law as part of the newly launched Ukrainian Legal Assistance Project. Considered fellows, they are enrolled in the school’s LL.M. program, focusing on international practice. All the prep work to get them here started in March, said Charles Kotuby Jr., professor and executive director of the Center for International Legal Education.
“These are Ukrainian students focused on going back to rebuild their country,” he said.
They will be assisted by global law firms, nongovernmental organizations and academic peers to provide advocacy and assistance regarding the legal issues arising from the war in Ukraine.
“Coming to the U.S. for this program…It was about surviving,” Vnukova said.
Koby said he knew how much work was going to need to be done to rebuild Ukraine from his years of practice in the Soviet Union. And the need wasn’t going to always be served by big firms.
“There’s a web of interrelated laws, treaties and courts that will hold Russia accountable for its actions in Ukraine,” Kotuby said when the project announcement was made in May. “The process of rebuilding Ukraine is going to be an enormous undertaking and international law has a big role to play in that process.”
Vnukova said that rebuilding Ukraine is a personal responsibility, and she plans to use her LL.M. degree to help bolster her country’s economy.
She currently serves as intellectual property legal counsel for Nova Poshta Global, a Ukraine-based shipping company, and she plans to deepen her knowledge of data protection law while at Pitt Law.
“I want to protect the inventions and technological innovations sure to come out after Ukraine rebuilds, and I want to protect our know-how,” Vnukova said.
But, she said, no one can predict the timing of returning home and the rebuild.
“It’s hard because you don’t know where your future is and where you’ll live,” she said. “Now I have a lot of possibilities. It’s a lot of questions, and not just professional questions. It’s personal ones too.”
Her family has asked her to return back, hoping she will come home after the program is over.
Her parents are still in Kyiv. Her father is a kernel with the Ukrainian army with no possibility to escape. Her mother escaped with her to Poland, but she has since returned back to Kyiv and works as a university lecturer.
“People spent so much time to help Ukrainians,” Vnukova said. “To help some girl just to survive…I hope one day when I have a lot opportunities to help someone who is deserving of it. I hope to be that person that person who will remember and will return it back to some other people.”For more information on the Ukrainian Legal Assistance Project, click here.
