Jewish? Soviet? Ukrainian? Russian? Jews Question Identities

In early February, Michelle Barsukov's 75-year-old grandfather, Vyecheslav, called from Kyiv to tell her that he had prostate cancer. His surgery was scheduled for later that month, Feb. 24. It would be the day President Vladimir Putin started the largest war in Europe since World War II. As Russian soldiers poured over the border, the elder Barsukov canceled the surgery and enlisted in Ukraine’s civilian corps. His granddaughter, a 22-year-old who was then a senior at Yale University, felt powerless in the face of the Russian war machine barreling toward her grandfather, as if she were a grain of sand being churned in a tidal wave. Isolated in her college dorm after testing positive for COVID, she was not just worried about the danger facing both her grandfather and her 19-year-old aunt, who studies journalism at Taras Schenko National University of Kyiv; the invasion 5,000 miles away felt personal.