"The war has started," her husband shouted, rushing her to wake their three children, get them dressed and hurry them to the basement for shelter.
In those moments, all her certainties came to a crashing end, she said at a panel discussion hosted Thursday by the American Bar Association. Russian President Vladimir Putin had invaded her country, on "the day that divided our life."
Born in Crimea, Pavlynska was given Russian citizenship, and no option to refuse it, after Putin invaded the peninsula in 2014.
"I didn't wish the story to be repeated with my children," she said, speaking from Germany. "I don't want my kids to have Russian passports."
She feared Russian tanks would soon arrive in the capital, so she packed up their things and left with them.
Her husband, though exempt from martial law preventing able-bodied men from leaving Ukraine, decided to remain in the country and join the army in Lviv.
"My kids would never respect me if I leave the country," she recalled him saying.
The legal community in Europe helped Pavlynska escape to Germany.
Linklaters LLP's head of the employment practice in Poland, Monika Krzyszkowska-Dąbrowska, met her at the bus station and hosted her for days at her apartment in Warsaw.
They didn't know each other personally, they just had worked on a common project two years ago, but that was enough, she said. Once they were in Germany, attorneys from firms within Arzinger's network found places for her and her children to stay.
"My whole way, I was supported by lawyers," she said. "Our colleagues, the legal professionals, we are a very big family."
Since the invasion, the legal industry in Ukraine has been turned upside down. The Ukrainian Bar Association, which has about 7,000 members, estimates that 30% of the country's law firms have shut down.
Arzinger's office, a usually vibrant workplace employing over 100 people, including about 80 lawyers, now stands empty.
Pavlynska, who heads the employment practice at the firm, said that she is still assisting clients, many of whom are still in Ukraine, but that most of her work is now pro bono to help other Ukrainian refugees.
Nearly 4.4 million Ukrainians have left the country since the war began, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Many of them fled to Poland. Others went to Romania, Hungary, Moldova and Slovakia. Some are in Russia and Belarus.
On March 24, President Joe Biden said the United States would take 100,000 Ukrainians, but the timeline for the arrivals and other details of the plan have yet to be released.
Jill Marie Bussey, director of public policy at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, one of the nine resettlement agencies working with the U.S. government, said she expects most refugees will be women and children.
"The trauma and mental health needs will be high, and mothers will face a range of challenges including a lack of affordable housing and day care nationwide," she said.
After the Biden administration's announcement last week that it would stop rejecting asylum-seekers at land borders, through a policy known as Title 42, Ukrainians have begun showing up at the U.S.-Mexico border.
About 3,000 have so far been admitted into the United States as humanitarian parolees, Bussey said.
"They're coming through the southern border, which is not an ideal situation," she said. "We understand the [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] and the Department of State are trying to expedite visa processing for Ukrainians. But there are some people who are just at risk and simply can't wait for the bureaucracy."
Meanwhile, millions of people who remain in Ukraine continue to endure Russian attacks, particularly in the east and south of the country. People from all walks of life and across sectors, including legal professionals, have turned into fighters overnight, said Inna Liniova, CEO of the Ukrainian Bar Association.
"We have Supreme Court judges who went to war," she said.
Attorneys from big law firms and many Ukrainian Bar Association members have taken up arms to fight Russia's invasion, Liniova said, speaking from Bulgaria.
There are about 60,000 attorneys in Ukraine, half of them women, according to the Ukrainian Bar Association.
Liniova said attorneys not directly involved in the fight are helping the association by collecting evidence of atrocities that has emerged since the war began, and particularly in recent weeks as Russian forces retreated from areas surrounding Kyiv.
War crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are all atrocities under international law, but they have distinct legal thresholds and carry different legal and political weight.
Anna Ogrenchuk, president of the Ukrainian Bar Association, said bodies and mass graves found in the town of Bucha, as well as reports of deliberate killings, torture and rape, indicate Russian soldiers might have committed all of them.
"Russia has committed all crimes that are classified as war crimes and crimes against humanity," she said, speaking from London. "The liberation of Bucha and other cities in the Kyiv region of the Russian occupation also revealed the signs of genocide."
She said the Russian army has engaged in systematic shelling of nonmilitary targets, including residential neighborhoods, hospitals and schools.
About 90% of infrastructure in the southern city of Mariupol, and 70% of that in Chernihiv in the north, has been turned to rubble, according to officials there. The Ukrainian government said up to 40,000 people in Mariupol have been deported to Russia. The reports haven't been independently confirmed.
On Friday, a Russian missile killed at least 50 people and wounded nearly 100 at a train station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk, which was packed with civilians trying to flee.
"All this testifies to today's undisguised policy of destroying the Ukrainian nation as a whole," Ogrenchuk said, comparing the atrocities to the Holocaust.
She said the world's lawyers can help end the war and hold Russia accountable for its aggression, starting by helping document and investigate atrocities.
"We need your expertise," she said.
She said the legal community should push for the creation of a special tribunal to prosecute Russia for the crime of aggression, which unlike other atrocities is not under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, the European Court of Justice or the European Court of Human Rights.
Liniova said there are many things lawyers can do to help Ukraine, starting by engaging with international judicial and human rights protection institutions.
"It's very important that the legal community condemns the war," she said. "It is of the utmost importance now that lawyers call the events in Ukraine for what they are."
Law firms and individual attorneys can also choose to terminate and deny legal services to companies that are not under sanctions, but still continue to do business in Russia.
Liniova said the gradual introduction of sanctions does not work. Lawyers should actively advocate for full economic isolation of Russia, including the severance of all trade relations and an embargo of its energy products. That would contribute to crushing the Russian economy, and force Putin to end the war, she said.
"Russia will not stop until it achieves the goal," she said. "We need rapid economic response."
--Editing by Brian Baresch.
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