[hprotagonist]

I have a family member who ended a 60 year friendship yesterday because the other party, who lives in moscow, wholly embraces the russian propaganda line; up to and including telling my family member that it's impossible that the city they both grew up in has been being shelled for the last week, and it was just the west's lies.

[unfocussed_mike]

How dreadful :-(

Yet again this week: this needs upvoting for visibility and downvoting for their experience.

Many in the UK and the USA in particular (but in Europe as well) can relate to this kind of experience of talking to someone who exists in an irrational belief bubble concerning one or two other topics.

But in most cases it doesn't have anywhere near the stark awfulness of this.

[jlokier]

'My city's being shelled, but mum won’t believe me' (bbc.co.uk)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60600487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30555692

--

The 25-year-old has been speaking regularly to her mother, who lives in Moscow. But in these conversations, and even after sending videos from her heavily bombarded hometown, Oleksandra is unable to convince her mother about the danger she is in.

"I didn't want to scare my parents, but I started telling them directly that civilians and children are dying," she says.

"But even though they worry about me, they still say it probably happens only by accident, that the Russian army would never target civilians. That it's Ukrainians who're killing their own people."

--

He was surprised not to have heard from his father, who works at a monastery near Nizhny Novgorod in Russia. He called his father and described what was happening. His father replied that this wasn't true; there was no war and - in fact - Russians were saving Ukraine from Nazis.

Mykhailo said he felt he knew the power of Russian propaganda, but when he heard it from his father, he was devastated.

"My own father does not believe me, knowing that I'm here and see everything with my own eyes. And my mum, his ex-wife, is going through this too," he says.

"She is hiding with my grandmother in the bathroom, because of the bombardment."

--

"I called my mum again. I told her I was scared. 'Don't worry', she said, reassuringly. 'They [Russia] will never bomb Kyiv'."

But they are already doing it, Anastasiya replied.

"I told her there were casualties among civilians. 'But that's what we had too when Ukraine attacked Donbas!', she said, laughing. For a moment I couldn't breathe. Hearing my mum say this with such cruelty just broke my heart."

Anastasiya believes the image Russian media has created is one of the "glorified Russian army" ridding Ukraine from Nazis. For years she avoided political arguments with her parents, but this time she slammed the phone down on her mum.

We spoke to Anastasiya when she was travelling away from Kyiv after four nights in a bomb shelter. Her mind was on an uncertain future.