Lilia Hrekul knows first-hand what it looks like when Kalisnikov-wielding troops come marching through town. The 2011 graduate of the University of Connecticut School of Law was a child when she saw troops patrolling her hometown in the then-Soviet republic of Moldova, 60 miles from the Ukraine border

These days, she is watching from afar as her now-independent homeland again serves as a front line in the showdown between Russia and the West.