From: NPR By Eleanor Beardsley and Kateryna Malofieieva
Anton Shtuka for NPR
KYIV, Ukraine — Ivan Sarancha was 7 when Ukrainian literature and history classes disappeared from his school. That was in 2014 after Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea and began to foment separatist unrest in his eastern Donbas region of Ukraine.
Sarancha says he was too young to realize what was going on back then. But his eyes were fully opened with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine eight years later. By then Sarancha was 15. He says he was deeply shocked by Russia’s destruction of the port city of Mariupol and its massacre of civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha.
“I began to develop critical thinking,” says Sarancha. “I watched the Russian news and compared it with Ukrainian and American news that I could see using a VPN [an online virtual private network]. And I figured out what was true and what was false. It was just common sense.”
That’s when Sarancha also began to think about running away from occupied territory to free Ukraine.
The story of this shy 18-year-old’s escape from enemy territory to what he calls “the country and culture of his birth” has turned him into a media star and is inspiring a war-weary nation….
Voice of Ukraine 