Fears for Her Own Family
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has dominated headlines over the past few weeks, and for Russians living abroad this has made for awkward conversations and interactions.
It’s no exception for Anna Gartsueva, who has lived in Reno for the past five years but was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. She is a psychology student at UNR who works as a behavioral technician for kids with autism.
Having lived in Russia for most of her life, watching the news of this event unfolding has been very difficult. “I don’t like what is going on and I don’t support anything that Russia is doing,'' she told Our Town Reno during a recent interview.
“I was frustrated and I think I went through all five stages of grief. Like waking up watching the news, going to work and coming back home and watching the news again and it's like this cycle over and over for a week, you kind of go crazy.”
Part of what’s difficult for her is that her family lives near the border with Finland, who like Ukraine, has flirted with the idea of joining NATO. Another concern is the lack of independent, reliable information that her family has access to.
“My parents don’t really have access to the internet or don’t really know how to use it. They come from an older generation so they watch news on TV, and all the news left on TV right now is pro-government and they are all controlled by the government.”, she said.
There are those within the country who see the misrepresentation that is being given, and are actively finding other sources of information.
“Mostly people in my generation, like the younger generation they’re all against it and they don’t believe the news,” she said of her peers in Russia. “They all have internet, they have Telegram channels that they can look at the news that are still up. Recently Instagram also was shut down in Russia, so without a VPN you cannot use it. But still, mostly people don’t support [the war].”, she said.
A Survivalist Mindset Among the Older Generation
Still, Anna believes the Russian mentality is difficult to change, especially the older generations who have lived through the years of the USSR, where for working class people like her family food was often hard to come by.
“They think it's fine, there have been wars, we can’t change anything. So we just like, are gonna live. Like, whatever. Our prices are three times higher? We’ll survive. They don’t care, and that’s the biggest problem of Russian people. If it doesn’t directly affect them, they aren’t going to do anything about it. And directly I mean their family. Not prices in the store or gas prices or whatever, but if it’s not going to be a part of their family they don’t care,” she said.
Going forward, Anna is trying not to have too many expectations of what will happen in the coming weeks.
“I just hope that this is going to end, somehow someday, that's it. I put my life on hold for two weeks basically, just watching the news and being kind of functional. So I’m trying to put myself together right now… I hope that [Russian President] Putin finally gets himself together and stops the war, and leaves Ukraine by itself because Russia right now is sinked. Like, nobody wants to deal with the country. We have over 5,000 sanctions put on the country, the economy is down, and it's going to be like that for another 30 years. Like even worse than when the USSR fell apart,” she predicted.
As of today, the invasion has been underway for a little under a month with possibilities of an end not being clear. The western powers of the world have united in placing an incredible amount of sanctions on Russia and have rallied to support Ukraine with aid. However, the calls for a no-fly zone by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have not been heeded as Western leaders fear it could escalate the conflict further.
For Anna, she simply wants people to understand that not all Russians are supporting this war, and that Vladimir Putin does not represent the majority of Russian people.