Months after graduating from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, in 2021, internationally known Ukrainian violinist Kostia Lukyniuk enrolled at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music in August 2022.
“Music and violin got me here! Into the greatest country on Earth,” said 23-year-old Lukyniuk. “And got me so many opportunities!”
But just a few months ago, his opportunity of studying at the University of Miami was anything but certain.
Two days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, Lukyniuk spoke to NBC 6 virtually from his apartment in Kyiv.
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“It's pretty horrible. I hear explosions constantly,” Lukyniuk told NBC 6 via Zoom in February.
A few weeks before the war, Lukyniuk was auditioning at the Frost School of Music in Coral Gables.
After that audition, Lukyniuk moved back to Ukraine because he said his student visa was about to expire.
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Within a matter of days, his home country had become a war zone.
In our February interview with Lukyniuk, he held an artillery shell up to the camera, and said it had been given to him.
“This is a shell that was given to me by the Ukrainian officer that I talked to today," Lukyniuk said back then. "He said these are the smallest rounds that they're getting shot at with. These are the smallest rounds."
After catching up with him recently, he said he didn’t stay in Kyiv much longer after our interview in February.
“I only lasted in Kyiv for eight days after everything kind of broke out. Then after that, I went to my hometown, Chernivtsi,” he said.
He said his hometown in western Ukraine had become a safe haven for refugees. In Chernivtsi, he said he found his own way of contributing to the war effort by performing daily concerts for refugees.
“They came there, and my mission was to provide some solace to them and provide a distraction from all of that,” he said.
All the while, he spent months wondering if he’d ever return to the University of Miami.
“I was actually approached by police and military people trying to recruit me into the army, trying to force me onto the front lines,” he said. “… But the third time, they actually took me into the recruitment center, and the only way that I was able to get out was that I had an acceptance letter from the Frost School of Music.”
While his countrymen fight on the battlefield, he said he feels called to use his musical talents to serve and benefit those back home.
Through musical performances and the relationships he’s made in the U.S., he said he’s been able to raise money for direct aid to those in need in Ukraine.
“Raising money here in the States, and people are sending money to me, I was buying bulletproof vests and I was sending them to the people in need, right on the front lines to the soldiers,” he said. “… We developed a saying back home, that ‘there’s a front for everybody.’”
He said he’s serving the best way he knows how and is grateful to those in the United States who’ve helped him donate to his family, friends and neighbors in Ukraine.
