I was running from my home in Kyiv as the Russian army occupied Bucha, Gostomel and Irpin in the early stages of its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
By accident, I was leaving in a bus that a nearby international school was using to evacuate its students and staff. We drove for a long time, spending nights in bomb shelters with young people and their kids from China, the Middle East and India who had been studying and working in Ukraine.
When the war broke out, Ukraine was hosting tens of thousands of students from the Global South and was generally viewed as a partner in many countries.
