In her childhood in the Russian city of Volgograd, Nina Riakhovskaia grew up with her younger cousin. Playing skaters, the two of them slid in their socks on the wooden floor of their grandmother’s house. They confided their secrets and loves to each other.
Today Riakhovskaya is 40 years old and lives in Kiev with her Ukrainian husband. She recently called her cousin in Volgograd to tell her that the Russians were invading Ukraine. Her cousin didn’t believe there was an invasion. She told her that Russia was just conducting an operation against Nazis in the neighboring country.
Speaking via video call from a country house near Kiev where she fled with her husband and 7-year-old son when the Russian invasion began, Riakhovskaya said: “It makes me feel like we are forever apart. I can’t forgive them. .I can’t forgive you being a part of it.”
Due to their countries’ complex and interconnected history, many Ukrainians and Russians have family members on both sides of the border who now find themselves on opposite sides of the war.
The conflict unleashed by Russian President Vladimir Putin has crossed the front lines and invaded the families of many Ukrainians and Russians, both in their two countries and in Ukrainian and Russian communities around the world.
War has already created family feuds and has led some people to fear that their relatives might hurt each other in battle.
“I have cousins ​​on both sides,” said Dan Hubbard, a professor at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia. “I’m very afraid of them killing each other.”
Hubbard, 64, was raised in the United States by his mother, who was Russian, and his great-grandmother, who was Ukrainian. He fondly recalls how the two used to share a cabbage pie, play cards and mock each other’s accents.
Today, some of his family members live near Moscow, and others live on the outskirts of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, which is being besieged by Russian forces. His Russian and Ukrainian cousins ​​are old enough to enlist in the army. Hubbard said he is avoiding television news because it causes him pain.
“I’m sorry on both sides, because the Russian boys don’t even know why they’re there,” he said. “My cousins ​​are killing each other over a madman’s fantasy.”
Zoia, 25, works at a cosmetics company in St. Petersburg. Her mother is Russian and her father is Ukrainian. She grew up near Moscow, but her paternal grandmother spoke to her in Ukrainian, read her Ukrainian poems and sang Ukrainian songs.
“This conflict is like when our parents fight,” said Zoya, who, like several others interviewed for this story, asked to be identified by her first name only for fear of repercussions in Russia. “You can’t choose between your mother and father, because you love them both.”
In a 2011 poll, 49% of Ukrainians said they had relatives in Russia. And a 2015 study found that there were 2.6 million Ukrainian citizens living in Russia.
With a Russian mother and Ukrainian father, Alona Cherkasski grew up in Moscow, but spent her summers in Odessa, Ukraine, where her grandparents lived. As an adult, she is proud of her dual ancestry. But with the Russian invasion, this became a source of suffering for her.
“I feel like it’s a very personal attack,” said Cherkasski, 45, who now lives in London.
His cousin Georgi, 44, is Russian, an animation professional and lives in Moscow with his wife, who hails from Odessa, the coastal city where the Russian Navy docked during the invasion. He said that until recently his wife did not differentiate between her Ukrainian identity and her adopted Russian identity.
“Of course, since they started dropping bombs on her country, she is seeing herself more like a Ukrainian,” Georgi said.
The kinship link between Russians and Ukrainians described by so many people of mixed origin is also emphasized by Putin, who has noted several times that the two countries share a common past. But while for many this proximity makes the invasion even more devastating, for Putin it justified hostilities.
“On the one hand, our president tells us that we are one people,” Georgi said, “but on the other hand, he is bombing them.”
Olena, the daughter of a Russian mother and Ukrainian father, said her parents are underground, hiding from Russian bombs in the eastern Ukrainian region of Sumi, close to the Russian border.
She said she grew up in both countries, speaking a mix of both languages, reading literature from both countries and listening to a mix of pop music from both.
Today she lives in France, reads Russian and Ukrainian fairy tales to her children and sings lullabies from both countries. But since the Russian invasion, her children have started asking what their country is.
“How can I tell them I’m more Russian or more Ukrainian?” she asked. “I never had to.”
In the house where she is sheltering, in the Ukrainian countryside, Riakhovskaia said it was very cold because, when she left Kiev, she was in shock and only took summer clothes. Now she has become afraid of the dark. At night, she and her family only use flashlights. They avoid turning on the lights in the house, so as not to attract the attention of Russian troops.
The disagreement with his family in Russia only intensified his distress. “It’s even harder because you lose your relatives,” she said. “They don’t believe in a person they’ve known since we were kids. They believe in television.”
