Ukrainians describe anger and frustration as they try to communicate invasion’s reality to relatives across the border
Highlights
- Russia’s war in Ukraine is testing myriad familial cross-border ties that have endured for decades.
- While people in Ukraine can see with their own eyes what is happening to their country, people in Russia do so only through the house of mirrors that is state television.
- Russian television is pervasive and persuasive that even some people in eastern Ukraine who watch it were taken in by its version of events.
- About half of Ukrainians – more than 20 million people – have family in Russia, according to a 2011 survey also found that a third of friends or acquaintances had friends or there had friends there.
- The war is now entering its fourth week, and an information war is intensifying.