Melikian Center graduate affiliate and master’s student of Liberal Studies reports from Ukraine
Over winter break, Rob “Pyotr” Cuthbert, master’s student of Liberal Studies at ASU and a graduate affiliate of the Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian, & East European Studies, traveled across Central Asia and Eastern Europe, spending two weeks in Ukraine as a journalist, reporting for a podcast, “Article One with Molly Hooper.”
Receiving press credentials from the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Rob reported from Kherson and Kharkiv, both of which were around 90 minutes from Russian troops.
Rob, a former US Army ranger, a veteran of two wars, and an award-winning opinion journalist, studied Russian at the Melikian Center’s Critical Languages Institute, which hosts intensive summer language programs at ASU, in the summers of 2022 and 2023. He built on his summer experiences by taking Advanced Russian courses in the School of International Letters and Cultures.
Both programs allowed him to not only have superlative classroom instruction in Tempe, but also, for two summers in a row, engage in life-changing immersion study in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Rob stated: “In the fall of 2023, Professor Moldabekova Robb and Professor Hoogenboom provided me with the historical, political, linguistic, and analytical knowledge to report from Eastern Ukraine.”
Subsequently, Keith Brown, the Director of the Melikian Center, extended an invitation to Rob to join as a graduate affiliate, making him the exclusive affiliate through both the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts and their Master of Liberal Studies program. Rob also credits the Master of Liberal Studies program for aiding in his preparation for some of his most impactful writing experiences in Ukraine.
Reflecting on his time in Ukraine, Rob said: “I did not have the resources of a major news organization, but I had an incredible amount of support through the professors at the Melikian Center, the Critical Languages Institute, and the School of International Letters and Cultures.”
While in Kherson, Rob wrote an op-ed published in the Boston Globe, “Americans must pressure Congress to approve support for Ukraine,” that described his experience attending Christmas Eve mass in the Roman Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Kherson, near the frontlines of the war. In the op-ed, Rob urges action: “There is no way the United States and its European allies can continue to allow Vladimir Putin and the Russian military to keep harming the children of Ukraine.”
When asked about why he decided to risk his own safety to go to Ukraine, Rob said “I am no longer a soldier, but I am a writer and journalist, and I want to help bring the truth of the war in Ukraine to the world.”
Rob also wrote a second op-ed recently published in the Chicago Tribune arguing that “the war in Ukraine demands a single-minded focus” from the United States if it wishes to curb Russian aggression.
Rob also wants to remind us that just because Arizona is geographically far from the conflict, its federal political representation has a significant impact on U.S. aid to Ukraine: “As an Arizonan and a Sun Devil, I thought it was important that I bore witness to the war.”
Scheduled for February 9, 2024, at 4:00 PM, Rob is set to deliver a presentation titled "Freelance Reported Opinion Writing and Reflections on Reporting in Ukraine" at the Cronkite School's Current Foreign Affairs and International Reporting (CFAIR) Organization, taking place in Room 404H of the Cronkite Building.