On day three of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Victoria Gogh realized her mother was slipping away from her.
“I noticed on the phone that mum was starting to parrot the government’s narrative about this war — that this was all the fault of NATO, that Russia had no choice but to defend itself,” said Gogh, 28, a fashion consultant originally from a small town in Siberia who moved to Moscow.
“It became my mission to change her mind, to show her what was really going on,” said Gogh, who has strongly opposed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on her social media channels.
Photo: AP
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to start a war with Russia’s neighbor has seen many Ukrainian families torn apart, as their adult men are forced to stay behind and fight while other members of the family flee the violence.
However, Russia has also been experiencing its own family rifts — between those who back the war and those who oppose it. Often, that divide runs along generational lines.
“In broad terms, younger Russians are less likely to have anti-Ukrainian sentiments. We have seen that the anti-war protests have also largely involved younger people,” said Andrei Kolesnikov of the Carnegie Moscow Center.
“A lot of how you perceive the war depends on where you get your news,” he said. “If you watch television, you are simply more likely to toe the official line. And older people tend to watch more TV.”
In the past, polling has found that television remains the biggest news source for Russians, with more than 60 percent of the population relying on it for information. Russians over 65 are 51 percent more likely to watch television than under-25s.
STATE MEDIA
The full force of Russian state media has been mobilized to portray the war as a “special military operation” aimed at liberating Ukraine and protecting citizens in Donbas from Ukrainian “genocide.” Videos of Russian bombs hitting cities have been described as staged by the Ukrainian side.
“We see that a majority of Russians appear to support the country’s actions, at least the way these actions are presented to them by the media,” Kolesnikov said.
He said it was unsurprising, given the sensitivity of the topic, that the war had created tensions between families and friends: “It is very hard for people to accept that their side are actually the bad guys.”
Gogh, who decided to leave the country last week after being detained for joining an anti-war protest in Moscow, said she eventually managed to convince her mother, Svetlana, of her country’s “devastating role” in the war.
“But now I have to persuade my older cousins and uncles. I have got a whole list,” she said.
Her “mission” is likely to become even harder.
On Friday, Russia announced a was block on Instagram, days after doing the same to Facebook and Twitter. The crackdown on social media — and Russia’s few remaining independent media outlets — would further restrict access to outside information on the war and boost the influence of state media.
For others, like Dmitry, a tech consultant in Moscow, the war has already had disastrous consequences for his relationship with his family.
“After the invasion, I wanted to move in with my parents to try to tell them what is really happening,” Dmitry said.
During the first week of the war, he went through a daily ritual of showing his parents video clips of Russian shelling of Ukrainian cities, and critical reports by independent bloggers and media outlets.
“But none of it had any impact. It actually only made them more convinced that they were right. After a week, I moved back out of the house, and my mother has since texted that I am betraying my country,” he said.
FINAL STRAW
The final straw came on Thursday, when his father sent him a news clip that claimed that Wednesday’s bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol had been staged by the Ukrainian authorities, with actors posing as injured mothers. This conspiracy theory has also been promoted by Russian officials.
“It made me so angry. I am not sure we will ever be able to sit at the same table again,” Dmitry said. “I think they have been zombified by state propaganda, and they truly see me as an enemy of the state. I have given up.”
For some, even their own experiences of being shelled have not been enough to convince their loved ones about Russia’s real activities.
The BBC and the New York Times have spoken to Ukrainians who said that their relatives in Russia simply would not believe that their cities were being bombarded.
“My parents understand that some military action is happening here, but they say: ‘Russians came to liberate you. They won’t ruin anything. They won’t touch you. They’re only targeting military bases,’” said Oleksandra from Kyiv, describing to the BBC her attempts to explain to her parents that the Ukrainian capital was under Russian attack.
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