#ProjectWithMe: Nastia Panchenko

I met Nastia Panchenko several months ago when did a #SpecialMilitaryOperation in New York City at the Russian consulate there. She was among a number of young Ukrainians who came to the projection, after which she told me her remarkable story about coming to the United States alone as a teenager after the full-scale invasion. Now almost 18, she has been living in New York on her own, finishing high school and now attending college. We stayed in touch, and she recently wrote this essay to project on the Russian embassy as a kind of New Year’s greeting to the embassy staff—and to Russia more generally.