Oleksandra and her four dogs have been sheltering in the bathroom of their apartment in Kharkiv since the bombing began.
“When I heard the first explosions, I ran out of the house to get my dogs out of their pens. People were panicking, abandoning their cars. And I was so scared,” she says.
The 25-year-old has spoken regularly with her mother, who lives in Moscow. But in these conversations, and even after sending videos of her heavily bombed hometown, Oleksandra cannot convince her mother of the danger she is in.
“I didn’t want to scare my parents, but I started to tell them directly that civilians and children are dying,” he says.
“But even if they worry about me, they still consider that it probably just happens by accident, that the Russian army would never target civilians. And that it’s the Ukrainians who are killing their own people.”
It is common for Ukrainians to have family across the Russian border. But for some, like Oleksandra, Russian relatives have a mixed understanding of the conflict. She believes this is due to the stories told by Russian media tightly controlled by the government.
Oleksandra says her mother only repeats the narratives she hears on Russian state TVs.
“It really freaked me out when my mom exactly quoted Russian TV. They’re just brainwashing. And people trust them,” he says.
“My parents understand that some military action is going on here. But they counter-argue: ‘The Russians have come to free you. They won’t spoil anything, they won’t touch you. They’re just targeting military bases.’
As the BBC interviewed Oleksandra, the bombing continued. The internet connection was weak, so it was necessary to continue the conversation through voice messages.
“I almost forgot what silence is like. They are bombing nonstop,” he said.
On Russian state TV channels, on the same day, there was no mention of the missiles that hit residential neighborhoods in Kharkiv, the deaths of civilians or the four people killed in line for water.
Russian state TV channels justify the war by blaming Ukrainian aggression and continue to call it “a special liberation operation”. Any Russian outlet that uses the words “war”, “invasion” or “attack” is blocked by the country’s media regulator for spreading “deliberately false information about the actions of the Russian military” in Ukraine.
Popular television channels say the threat to Ukrainian civilians does not come from the Russian military, but from Ukrainian nationalists who use civilians as human shields.
Some Russians took to the streets to protest the war, but these demonstrations were not reported on the main state television channels.
Mikhailo, a well-known Kiev restaurant owner, had neither the time nor the inclination to watch Russian TV coverage of the invasion.
When the bombing of Ukraine’s capital began, he and his wife were focusing on how to protect their six-year-old daughter and baby son.
At night, her children would wake up to the sound of explosions and would not stop crying. The family made the decision to move to the outskirts of Kiev and then flee abroad.
They traveled to Hungary, where Mikhailo left his wife and children and returned to Western Ukraine to help with the war effort.
He was surprised not to hear from his father, who works at a monastery near Nizhny Novgorod, Russia.
He called his father and described what was happening. His father replied that this was not true, there was no war and the Russians were saving Ukraine from the Nazis.
Mikhailo said he felt he knew the power of Russian propaganda, but when he heard it from his own father, he was devastated.
“My own father doesn’t believe me, knowing that I’m here and I see everything with my own eyes. And my mother, his ex-wife, is also going through this”, he says.
“She is hiding with my grandmother in the bathroom, because of the bombing.”
Russian media has been tightly controlled for many years and viewers have an uncritical view of the country and its actions around the world.
“The state narrative only shows Russia as the good guy in the story,” says Joanna Szostek, an expert on Russia and political communications at the University of Glasgow in Scotland.
“Even in the stories they tell about World War II, the Great Patriotic War, Russia never did anything wrong. And that’s why they won’t believe it now.”
Most Russians, explains the expert, do not seek other points of view. The one-sided narrative that is highly critical of other countries helps explain why Russians may have opposing views to their relatives who live across the border.
“People who have criticized Russia for a long time are presented as traitors. The critics are all foreign agents working for the West. So you don’t even believe your own daughter.”
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Anastasia’s parents live in a small village 20 km away from the Donetsk People’s Republic, controlled by Russian-backed rebels.
The village is still under the control of Kiev authorities, but Russian state TV channels are always on at home. They even have the clock set to Moscow time, almost like a throwback to the Soviet past.
When, on February 24, Anastasia woke up in Kiev to the sound of sirens, she knew how her parents would react.
“My mother was the first person I called when I jumped out of bed at five o’clock, disoriented. She was surprised I called and seemed very calm, almost casual,” she says.
Anastasia, a Ukrainian BBC correspondent who moved to Kiev 10 years ago, heard bombs going off after waking up and was worried about where the next target would be.
“I called my mother again. I told her I was scared. ‘Don’t worry,’ she replied reassuringly. ‘They [Rússia] will never bomb Kiev’.”
But they’re already doing that, Anastasia countered.
“I told her there were civilian casualties. ‘But that’s what we had too when Ukraine attacked Donbas!’ she said, laughing. For a moment I couldn’t breathe. Hearing my mother say this so cruelly broke my heart. .”
Anastasia believes that the image the Russian media has created is that of the “glorified Russian army” ridding Ukraine of the Nazis. For years, she avoided political arguments with her parents, but this time she slammed the phone in her mother’s face.
The BBC caught up with Anastasia as she was traveling far from Kiev after four nights in an air raid shelter. Her mind was on an uncertain future.
“There are a lot of thoughts in my head right now. What will happen to all of us? Where is this going? Will I ever go back? Will I ever see my parents again? I still love them deeply, but something inside me has broken. “
“And I don’t think it can be fixed.”
Read more on the BBC
