War creates some sort of afterlives. People may manage to escape, survive because the war finishes, but the
truth is they will probably never be alive again.
The Radio Bocconi studio looked like it always does, with microphones angled carefully, headphones resting on the table and empty chairs waiting for guests. But this time the silence had a different weight. We were not just recording a podcast episode but trying to hold a conversation that people usually avoid and drop the moment it gets slightly uncomfortable: the lived reality of war and the hard truth that the word “peace” sometimes is just ink on paper.
This enlightening episode was possible thanks to two student-led forces working in sync: students for Humanity made it possible by building relationships and bringing these wonderful guests into the same room. Radio Bocconi made it real by offering the studio space and the technical support to record it, turning a one-time conversation into something that can travel beyond the room.
The event sits within the broader “Schools for Victory” initiative, a student-driven project connected to the Latvian NGO “Your friends”, bringing different universities into a shared space to talk about war through testimonies, expertise and lived experiences.
It’s been almost five years that every day in the news we hear that cold and haunting word: “war”. A word that, especially in the past weeks, became almost a habit, one that we carry each day hoping that its meaning will never knock on our door. And is because of this hope that people argue about negotiations and strategies often forgetting and consciously ignoring that war is not only about red lines and sovereignty but broken families and people and bodies piling up.
In that studio, the conversation asked us to look at what war and the peace after it does to people, to women.
The most immediate perspective came from two wonderful hosts coming from the “Forum Donne” association, through the voices of women who work directly with displaced mothers and children.
In 2026, we entered the fifth year of the Ukrainian Russian war and since the beginning, referring to war refugees, people asked: “why don’t these people integrate? Why don’t they find a job and learn Italian since there is no coming back?”
The President of the Association, Roksolana Kopaigora, described a brutal psychological reality in which this people live in: a limbo.
She explained that many women, in the beginning, do not learn the language because they are certain they’ll return soon, keeping on thinking “One more week. One more month. This is temporary”. Until day after day the years go on and some still feel unable to integrate because integration feels like betrayal, as if belonging here means giving up on going back.
She spoke her experience to emigrate to Italy for love and working reasons and despite having a support network behind her, she still struggled. She stressed the fact if it was hard for her with a safety net, imagine how difficult and heartbreaking can be for those who arrived with anything but fear, those who fled with nothing but the urgency to survive, maybe even with death whispering on their shoulder.
War displaces people physically, but it also displaces identity, as you persistently feel that your life is on hold and this is this is just temporary and that it will be over soon.
The following speaker was Valentyna Kuzina Rudawhen the conversation shifted into even darker territory: trauma, violence, and the long aftermath.
As a psychologist, she spoke about what it means to support people who experienced the brutality of war, torture, a violence that is not only is physical but psychological and when she began talking about children, the air thickened. She explained that the war targets families and uses fear as a weapon that keeps working long after the immediate danger as passed: for many women and man the real tragedy begins when you realise you are alive and your children are scarred for life by tortures that the parents could only watch.
For many women, that feeling of survival it’s the start of the real war: nightmares, guilt, anxiety, the feeling that safety is temporary and could be revoked at any moment.
This is when the third speaker, Dr. Michele Usuelli, came in to answer the question that the world keeps on asking since 2022 that the Ukrainian invasion began: “Why don’t they accept a truce or a ceasefire? Isn’t peace more important ”.
Dr. Michele Usuelli is an Emergency doctor with experience in conflict and post-conflict contexts like Afghanistan and Sudan, as well as clinical work in Milan.
His contribution to the conversation was crucial because he refused the common assumption that “after the war” means improvement, especially for women. So, what happens after a ceasefire? Do women essentially take their role in society? His answer, grounded in lived experience was essentially: no, as “peace” cannot be reduced to the absence of gunfire.
He decided to narrate his experience in Afghanistan to vividly show us what he meant: during and after the conflict the country had restrictions on women’s education, work, mobility, and public presence that have become systematic, enforced not only through laws and decrease but through everyday fear. Despite the end of the war, women are restricted from moving freely, reaching a hospital independently even with an emergency, banned from workplaces…
Therefore, he criticized politician’s rhetoric that judges migrant mothers or pregnant women who survive deserts, hunger and the Mediterranean sea that she is “not a good mother”, especially since they are running from the rape from which that child was born.
The final reflection that came out of the conversation was the idea that the war creates some sort of afterlives. People may manage to escape, survive because the war finishes, but the truth is they will probably never be alive again. Education is interrupted, careers have been frozen, children forced to grow up too fast and, of course, mental health becomes a distant dream: a war might end but it scars you for life.
The recording ended and a studio went back to looking like a studio: the cameras were turned off, the microphones and chairs were in place, but the conversation did not feel finished. The silence and reflection felt like a reminder that peace is not a word you get to use just because the sound of the bomb fades, people stop living in shelters or assigned piece of paper becomes a ceasefire. Peace is when a woman can study, move, work, and children can act like once, anything less is just silence after violence, which is why sometimes the piece that we hear and know about is just a myth.
I am Giulia, currently enrolled in the second year of International politics and government (BIG) and a politics and history enthusiast. I see writing as window that brings clarity to our complex world: a bridge between thoughts and reality.
