‘They don’t believe it’s real’: how war has split Ukrainian-Russian families

Ukrainians describe anger and frustration as they try to communicate invasion’s reality to relatives across the border

Rescuers work at the site of the National Academy of State Administration building damaged by shelling in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Friday, March 18, 2022. Picture: AP Photo/Andrew Marienko

Alexander Serdyuk has stopped talking to his mother. He is nervously watching war edge ever closer to his home in Lviv. She is 1,500 miles (2,400km) to the east in Russia, denying that any of it is actually happening.

“I can’t speak with her,” says the 34-year-old Russian who moved to Ukraine 10 years ago. “She doesn’t understand me. She says it’s just Nazis killing each other, and that we are responsible for all this.”