Registration REQUIRED by 4pm on March 9, 2026 to attend this event in-person.
Please join the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute for a panel discussion with Olga Rudneva, Roksolana Yurchyshyn, and Mary Jordan. Moderated by Mark Andryczyk.
This talk will bring together three perspectives on the hidden cost of Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine. As questions about a prospective peace plan continue to circulate, Olga Rudneva, Roksolana Yurchyshyn, and Mary Jordan bring firsthand accounts of soldiers on the frontlines, Ukrainians coping with trauma, and rescued children from the Temporarily Occupied Territories. Together, their work paints the sweeping cost of war beyond the headlines and centers a conversation on what a just peace really means for Ukraine.
Olga Rudneva is the founder and CEO of the Superhumans Trauma Centre in Lviv, Ukraine, which has treated over 1,000 wounded amputees from Russia’s illegal invasion of Crimea in its first two years. In December 2024, she was named in BBC’s 100 women for her work inspiring others. Rudneva was a director of the Olena Pinchuk Foundation, which worked to halt the spread of HIV/AIDS across Ukraine. When the full-scale Russian invasion happened, she was abroad, and for a few months, ran a humanitarian aid hub in Poland, before she returned to Ukraine to start a new project, the Superhumans Centre. The center opened in 2023 and is described as a clinic for psychological assistance, prosthetics, reconstructive surgery, and rehabilitation for people affected by the war.
Roksolana Yurchyshyn is a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist at St. Nicholas Hospital and a child psychotherapist and neurologist at the Mental Health Center of St. Panteleimon Hospital First Lviv Medical Union in Lviv, Ukraine. At First Lviv Medical Union, practitioners have not only discovered new forms and techniques of treatment for severe trauma patients, but they have also radically transformed the Soviet-inherited hospital structure into a mental health center with a guiding philosophy that is both existential and psychoanalytic. Dr. Yurchyshyn is part of the program Unbroken Kids.
Mary Jordan produces and directs award-winning documentary work, shaping educational and art-driven films that illuminate unseen worlds and human stories. She advises and collaborates with humanitarian organizations across the world—from Africa to Afghanistan to Australia and Ukraine—using creativity as a tool for advocacy, visibility, and meaningful change. Additionally, she is working on a film that documents the abduction of Ukrainian children in Russia’s war on Ukraine. She mentors creatives, founders, and cultural thinkers, offering guidance that cultivates clarity, resilience, and an awakened sense of personal and artistic purpose.
Please email disability@columbia.edu to request disability accommodations. Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs.

