“Three days ago I cut off all contact with my father Sergei,” says Liza Zimina. The 25-year-old Ukrainian IT employee shows a photo of them together. “This is the last time I saw him in Moscow, in Red Square.” Zimina, like many Ukrainians, has a lot of Russian relatives.
Her father, grandmother and godfather live in Moscow. Even before the war started, relations were tense. “My father said it was all nonsense, that Russia would never invade Ukraine. Then I said to him: OK, let’s see.” The situation has now become untenable. Zimina’s father refuses to believe that it is the Russians who invaded Ukraine.
“Because of the Russian propaganda, he is firmly convinced that it is Ukrainian nationalists who are fighting, that all reports about the war are fake, fake news.”
Earlier disagreements
Zimina’s parents divorced when she was one and a half. She grew up just outside Kiev. Her father, who imports wines, moved back to Moscow. She visited him every summer. They had a good relationship. But during the annexation of Crimea by the Russians in 2014 and the secession of the self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, Zimina and her father also had disagreements.
“My father said those areas belong to Russia, that Ukraine had no business there.” He did not take her arguments that Crimea is Ukrainian territory occupied by the Russians. The quarrel ran high. They didn’t talk to each other for four years. But when her father had a son, and she therefore a half-brother, she decided to reestablish contact. “Look, here you see me with my father and my half-brother Zachar. It’s a sweetheart.”
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