ETSU grad has 'emotional' online graduation from war-torn Ukraine
East Tennessee State University held a special virtual ceremony for an international graduate student, a 27-year-old war journalist living in Ukraine who completed his master's degree at home amid the Russian invasion.
His time working toward a degree in Appalachian studies showed him the value of putting your home in a place of honor ‒ and even fighting for it.
"Appalachian Studies taught me something profoundly important. That loving your region does not mean isolating it. It means defending it against erasure while inviting dialogue," Pavlo Rybaruk told Knox News from his village, Kryvorivnia. "Ukrainian studies and Appalachian studies emerged for the same reason: to correct distortions imposed by powerful centers. Both insist that local knowledge matters."
Rybaruk traveled from Ukraine to attend the university in Johnson City through the Fulbright Scholars program, enrolling in the fall 2019 semester and studying in Tennessee for two academic years. He returned to Ukraine in the spring of 2021 to complete his research and run a museum in his village. But in February 2022, Russia launched its invasion.
More than three years later, Rybaruk has completed his thesis to earn a Master of Arts in Appalachian Studies degree. He said the degree is valuable back home because scholars like him and those at ETSU understand the wisdom embedded in the rural regions.
"Graduating from ETSU is emotional," Rybaruk said via text. "It feels like standing on a ridge between two mountain ranges that now speak to each other through me."
His thesis argues that traditional farming practices and technologies used by different groups of people - in Rybaruk's case, the Hutsul people in a region near the Carpathian Mountains - are blueprints to "teach us how to live within limits, how to survive crises (and) how to remain human under pressure," he told Knox News.
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Rybaruk was familiar with Appalachia through connections forged by ETSU and its scholars, primarily Ron Roach, with Ukraine. Roach, who acts as the department chair for Appalachian studies at ETSU, is involved in the Appalachian-Carpathian International Conference.
When Rybaruk arrived in East Tennessee, it felt like home. The connections created a "real bridge between Appalachia and the Carpathians" that grew into "moral commitments" after Russia invaded.
Rybaruk attended the Dec. 18 graduation ceremony via Zoom from Lviv, where he was filming a video about Ukraine, its history "and how we need to decolonize everything," he said during the ceremony. He wore traditional Hutsul clothing and thanked the university for being patient with him.
"Completing a thesis is a challenging task in the best of most circumstances, but few students have encountered the barriers that Pavlo has had to overcome," Roach said during the ceremony, sharing condolences for Rybaruk's friend who recently died.
Knox News talked with Rybaruk before and after the ceremony via WhatsApp.
This Q&A has been lightly edited.
How does living in Kryvorivnia in the Hutsul Region and near the Carpathian Mountains compare to Appalachia?
Rybaruk:Living in Kryvorivnia and living in Appalachia feel less like two different worlds and more like two dialects of the same mountain language. In my thesis, I argue that mountains are not just landscapes - they are teachers. They shape how people move, work, remember, speak and care for one another. Both the Carpathians and Appalachia demand humility. You cannot dominate them without the consequence of losing depth of knowledge and experience that made our ancestors so peculiar and powerful despite all the limitations of previous centuries. Raw immediacy of felt experience is what nature teaches us wherever you travel. I remember traveling to Syracuse (New York), and visiting a speech of a local Native American chief who said, "You cannot negotiate with nature just like you cannot wake up the one who's pretending to sleep." It was with photos of icebergs melting and Californian wildfires on the background and was very powerful reminder of primal attitude towards the fake and excessive aspects of modern world that hit close home.
In Kryvorivnia, as in Appalachia, people historically survived not through wealth or power, but through knowledge passed quietly across generations - when to move animals, when to cut timber, how to read weather, how to gather without exhausting the land. These ethno-ecological technologies are not techniques you learn from a manual. They are learned by watching elders, by failing, by listening. And I hope they can become institutionalized.
What struck me deeply when I came to Appalachia was how familiar everything felt: the winding roads, the attachment to hollers and ridges, the suspicion of outsiders who come to "extract" rather than understand. Appalachia, like Hutsulshchyna, has been romanticized and exploited at the same time - turned into a symbol while being denied agency. My thesis insists that both regions must be understood not as frozen folklore, but as living, adaptive systems still capable of shaping their own futures. That's why I hiked so much there and spend as much time as possible trying to interact with all social groups of people from poorest to richest to feel what locals and their region are really like.
What did you study in Ukraine before coming to ETSU, and how did your studies and experiences inform your research here?
Rybaruk:I studied English and Ukrainian linguistics in Kyiv. But I studied Ukraine as a living organism long before I studied it academically by living inside its contradictions. I grew up in a village dense with memory. My home was surrounded by museums, churches, archives and stories buried in the soil. My grandfather documented Hutsul culture despite neglect and lack of funding or as much interest as there is now. My parents worked inside local museum institutions that preserved memory without state support. Nobody connected civilizational, national and regional memory/culture and security as much as they do now.
This upbringing shaped how I approached scholarship. I never believed that culture could be separated from politics, or ecology from identity. Ukrainian Studies taught me that history is not neutral — especially in a country that has survived multiple attempts at erasure.
When I arrived at ETSU, Appalachian Studies gave me language for what I already felt, that regions carry trauma, resilience and wisdom simultaneously. My thesis is where these two traditions met.
How was your time in the Fulbright program, Johnson City and ETSU, and what research did you conduct in the area? How did you adapt to the U.S. during your studies?
Rybaruk:Adapting to the U.S. was easier than adapting to being away from my land. But Appalachia softened that distance. I recognized the cadence of mountain speech, the pride mixed with exhaustion, the quiet intelligence of people who have been underestimated their entire lives.
At ETSU, I learned that scholarship can be humane. That research can respect the people it studies. That academics can listen. This was not always my experience in post-Soviet institutions.
I conducted comparative research on sustainable development, mountain economies and ethno-ecological knowledge. But more importantly, I learned how to translate my region's experience into a language Americans could understand without flattening it.
What can you tell me about returning to Ukraine and working on your thesis, especially during the war?
Rybaruk:Returning to Ukraine after studying sustainability felt surreal. Suddenly, sustainability meant keeping people alive. The Hutsul region became a refuge. Villages absorbed thousands of displaced people without infrastructure, without preparation - only solidarity.
Writing my thesis during this time felt like writing against time itself. Every chapter carried the weight of destruction elsewhere. I understood that preserving knowledge is not nostalgia - it is resistance. When Russia destroys archives, museums and libraries, it is because culture is power.
As a journalist, what were some of your experiences and reporting during this time? How do you view your role as a journalist, and how has it influenced your research and museum work?
Rybaruk:As a war journalist, I witnessed what happens when culture collapses under violence. In eastern Ukraine, I met people who had lost not only homes, but songs, dialects, heirlooms - entire universes of meaning.
These experiences reshaped my thesis. I realized that the Hutsul region's survival was not accidental. It was the result of decentralized, place-based resilience - the same quality Appalachian communities have relied on when abandoned by the state.
I see journalism as emergency ethnography. As a museum director, I see museums not as static repositories, but as living organisms. Both roles demand responsibility. You must decide what to save when everything cannot be saved.
My research is inseparable from this work. Appalachian Studies reinforced my belief that communities must control their own narratives. Outsiders may help - but they must not dominate.
What are your plans now? How will you bring your experiences together in your future work, and what is your outlook on the future for yourself and Ukraine as a whole?
Rybaruk:My future lies at the intersection of research, journalism and cultural defense. I want to help Ukraine rebuild not only roads and houses, but meaning.
I believe Appalachia understands this. Ukraine's future, like Appalachia's, depends on whether regions are allowed to speak in their own voices. Despite everything, I believe in that future.
Keenan Thomas is the higher education reporter for Knox News. Email: keenan.thomas@knoxnews.com .
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This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: ETSU grad has 'emotional' online graduation from war-torn Ukraine
