He’s 17 and studying at a college in Connecticut. First he had to escape war, ‘explosions and total uncertainty’ to get here.

Growing up in Kyiv, Ukraine, Oleksandr “Sasha” Stelmakh had long wanted to come to the United States.

But he didn’t expect to get here this soon and to be attending Southern Connecticut State University as a 17-year-old computer science major.

However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine sped up his life’s journey and, six weeks after he and his mother, Yuliia Stelmakh, left their home, they arrived April 2 in the United States, living in Washington, D.C.

And through the efforts of adjunct professor Dina Brun, a member of Tutoring Without Borders, which offers education to Ukrainian students, Sasha Stelmakh made his way to Southern.

Southern’s Office of International Education was able to give him one semester’s worth of aid, according to a university spokeswoman. Tutoring Without Borders notes online that it is an “independent platform helping to connect Ukrainian citizens in need of academic help with potential instructors or tutors.”

“It’s good. I love it here,” he said of the United States and SCSU, where he lives in a dorm with a roommate.

He did have a head start with the language.

“I learned English for 11 years, but it was not really learning. It’s like we did … English tests and that’s all,” he said.

Stelmakh did not know what to expect when he heard the Russian army was massing on the border, headed for Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.

“Before Feb. 24, I heard about the possibility of war,” he said. “But nobody believed in that because it’s ridiculous. Twenty-first century and two countries make war.

“So I did my homework Feb. 23 and went to bed,” Stelmakh said. “So then, Feb. 24, My mom woke me up with words ‘the war has started and we need to run.’ Then Russian started to bomb our cities, our infrastructure like airports and so on.”

He and his mother each packed a small suitcase and headed for a country house the family owns in the village of Berritsa, between Kyiv and the Belorussian border, joined by his grandparents and an uncle. They were far from any major infrastructure or even stores, so they felt safe.

Leaving Kyiv, Stelmakh said, “I remember a big traffic jam and that everybody has fear on their faces.”

The house has no water, heat or indoor plumbing, and it was 5 degrees F. in Ukraine’s coldest month. “And we didn’t take with us a lot of food. So we had just a small bag of food,” Stelmakh said. “And for five people it was not enough.”

“We spent almost a week in this village,” he said. “But after two days, we understood that we don’t have enough food for us. And we started to eat once per day.”

Besides the lack of food, the feeling of safety began to wane.

“We were shocked and scared,” Stelmakh said. “We heard explosions, which were about six miles away. My mom told told me that we all need to run from this village because we were trapped. … Russian troops started to move from Belarus to Kyiv but my grandparents said no, we will be here. This is our homeland. We grew up here and we will not leave.”

Stelmakh didn’t want to leave either.

“I didn’t want to leave my homeland and grandparents because I thought that is the safest place we can be, because it was only the first week of the war. And it was a big uncertainty,” he said.

He and his mother returned to Kyiv, where they heard the Russians had “started to martyr innocent people there in Bucha and Irpin. Stelmach grew more scared.

“I heard a big explosion. It was the day when Russian troops bombed our TV tower in Kyiv and it was like 1,500 feet away,” he said. “Sirens, explosions and total uncertainty.”

He and his mother left for the train, which was not easy either, because they had no idea when it would arrive, for safety reasons.

“So at 6 p.m. the train finally came, but we were lucky because the train doors stopped near us and people started to yell and fight to come inside,” Stelmakh said. “When we came inside we hugged each other and cried. … The train was completely packed.”

The next morning, friends met them in Lviv, where they stayed one night. The next day, his grandparents told them Russian tanks had entered Berritsa.

“We were shocked,” he said. “We couldn’t believe that our safety place, as we thought before, all the time was a trap.”

The Russian soldiers “killed all the men who protected the village” and confiscated everyone’s cell phones, but his grandparents hid theirs. Then they and his uncle hid for a month in a 6-by-9-foot cellar.

The next day, Sasha and Yuliia Stelmach crossed into Poland, staying in nine locations before they could get a visa to come to the United States, entering as refugees under temporary protected status.

“I was amazed. I was just amazed,” Stelmach said of his first impression of the United States. “Because it was my dream for my life to get to move” to America.

Brun said when she was looking for someone to sponsor through Tutoring Without Borders, she was told, “Sasha is your ideal candidate,” but the semester was fast approaching.

“He was amazing,” she said. “Even before you asked him for something, he would produce it. He was very motivated to start studying. I’m just so happy we found him and he found us.”

At Southern, he’s studying computer science, which he said is “in my blood,” He hopes he’ll be able to stay, but money is an issue.

But no matter what happens, Stelmach said he is certain about one thing: “I am safe.”

Ed Stannard can be reached at estannard@courant.com