807: Eight Fights

Ira Glass

Back in the winter of 2022, in the days and weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, there was one thing that most Ukrainians and most Russians had in common. They both insisted that war was impossible. War was unbelievable. And one reason it was unbelievable is that many families, possibly most families on either side of the border, have family members in the other country.

Many Russians have some Ukrainian roots. Many Ukrainians have spent time living in Russia. Even President Zelenskyy, like many Ukrainians, grew up speaking Russian. He had a career in Russia, starred in Russian movies, performed comedy for Russian audiences. Even Putin's seen him perform-- called him a good actor years ago.

So when Russians did start the war, it wasn't just on the battlefield or in the airspace over Ukrainian cities. It was within families. This is something I had no idea about, the way a conflict like this might take the normal disagreements between people and blow them up. When you think about it, like, of course, right?

It was the writer Masha Gessen who explained this to me. Masha was born in Moscow, moved to the United States as a teenager with their family, then moved back to Russia as an adult to work as a journalist. They've written several books, now currently a staff writer at The New Yorker. And what Masha has put together today is a very unusual story where they try to capture what this is like by looking at one family and the fights they get into related to the war. So what you're about to hear is one family and eight fights. Here's Masha.

Masha Gessen

In normal times, we keep the peace in families by letting things go, by accommodating, by forgetting things or pretending not to notice things. But when war starts, even the quietest, most conflict-avoidant people start fighting. Just before the war began, on February 21, 2022, two people sat at a long dining table in a Moscow apartment.

These are my friends Nadia and Karen. They are at the center of this constellation of people I'm going to tell you about. I've known Nadia the longest-- since she was a college student in Moscow about 25 years ago. She was tall, blonde, butch, very cool. She still is. Soon after graduating, in 2003, she moved to Kyiv.

And there's Karen a gay man, a friend I've known through many relationships. Twelve years ago, Karen and Nadia had a baby together. They lived in different countries, but it didn't seem like a big deal. Karen was in Moscow, Nadia in Ukraine, in Kyiv, so their son Luka was growing up in Kyiv but regularly visited his dad in Moscow. And on this night, all three of them were in Karen's apartment in Moscow. Luka had gone to bed. The adults were watching a speech by Vladimir Putin.

Masha Gessen

Putin was declaring war. So Karen and Nadia had a fight.

Masha Gessen

Fight number one-- where does Luka go? Even before Putin's speech, Nadia was ready. She didn't think the war would happen, but she'd made a plan for Luka if war broke out-- a plan she hadn't told Karen about until now.

Masha Gessen

This is Karen.

Masha Gessen

And she didn't push too hard because that wasn't her way.

Masha Gessen

We, as in Nadia, Luka, and Nadia's girlfriend, Sophie.

Masha Gessen

Including the summer clothes.

Now, Sophie flies to Berlin with as much stuff as she can carry on a plane. Nadia and Luka meet her there.

Masha Gessen

Well, she is. This is how she is with everyone.

So Nadia and Luka leave. Karen stays. And Russia invades Ukraine. Karen is going to protests, but he's lost, crying every day. After a few days, he goes to a goodbye party at a friend's apartment.

Masha Gessen

I can tell you when this was, because I was there. March 4. And it's true that this was all our friends were talking about. There were rumors that Russia would close the border, impose martial law, conscript all the men, and just a general sense that you had to get out now or it will be too late. At the party, Karen started to get upset. Like, wait, you were all just going to leave me here?

Masha Gessen

So Karen and his boyfriend buy tickets. To give you a sense of just how difficult it was to get out by then, they end up flying to Ulan-Bator, the capital of Mongolia. From there, after a few days, they fly to Seoul, South Korea, then to Dubai, then to Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, where they stay for a bit.

Masha Gessen

Fight number two-- who is Russian, and who is Ukrainian? To understand the roots of this next fight, we have to go back a long time, to New Year's Eve 2010, when Karen and Nadia met.

Masha Gessen

They were 31 and 28. They were both queer. They were both Buddhists. So they had that in common. Other than that, they didn't discuss any of the big issues of how to raise a child-- what school he would go to, what languages he would speak, how they would explain the world to him.

Nadia knew she wanted to raise him in Ukraine. She'd moved there from Moscow years before this. Karen wanted to stay in Moscow, but he'd visit. They weren't exactly friends. They went straight to being co-parents. They figured they'd work it out.

A few years later, it was time to choose a school for Luka. Nadia had to make a commitment to the next 10 years or so of her son's schooling and the language in which he was going to study. At the time, Kyiv had schools with instruction in Ukrainian, Russian, English, German, French. Nadia was struggling to make a choice, but Karen had a definite opinion.

Masha Gessen

Karen's kind of a funny one to be championing Russian culture. He grew up an outsider. His heritage is Armenian, Jewish, Greek, and, yeah, some Russian. He has dark, curly hair, a trimmed beard, a wide, chiseled face, and a long, prominent nose. He's beautiful.

He also doesn't look Russian at all. It's not easy to grow up in Russia when you don't look ethnically Russian. I know. I grew up in Russia looking un-Russian, and I got teased, chased, and beaten up a lot. Karen's name marks him as an Armenian. He had to fight for the right to be Russian.

Nadia, on the other hand, with her blonde hair and blue-gray eyes-- growing up in Moscow, she certainly never had to defend her right to be there. She moved to Kyiv as a kind of experiment and found that she loved it there. It became her home. Karen and a lot of Nadia's friends, though, kept assuming she was in Ukraine temporarily. On this particular night, Karen was a little drunk.

Masha Gessen

In fact, Karen had always hoped that Nadia would move back to Moscow. Nadia had zero intention of doing that.

Masha Gessen

Not that she said this to Karen. Why start a fight?

Masha Gessen

A vyshyvanka is a traditional Ukrainian embroidered Shirt. Karen told me he didn't have anything against Ukrainian tradition in particular.

Masha Gessen

There's a big difference between Russian and Ukrainian national costumes. The vyshyvanka, long before the war, was a symbol of the renaissance of Ukrainian culture and identity after the fall of the Soviet Union. Ukraine was a former colony of Russia. Karen, like most Russians, was oblivious to this.

Masha Gessen

Kind of. To Nadia, it was about Karen's attitudes toward all things Ukrainian. He thought Kyiv was a backwater.

Masha Gessen

Every parent wants to give their children what they didn't have growing up. Nadia, unlike Karen, grew up in the center of Moscow, in the very heart of the empire, in a privileged family. Karen couldn't believe she was willing to give up what he had so longed for as a kid. Nadia, for her part, wanted to avoid conflict. So in the end, Luka didn't go to a Ukrainian school or a Russian school. He enrolled in a German school in Kyiv.

When the war started, all those things that Luka had heard his father say, that he and his mother are really Russian, these ideas hit Luka hard. His father's country was bombing his motherland.

Masha Gessen

Talking to Luka didn't help much. Maybe he could be convinced that the war wasn't his fault, but he was still stuck with this problem of being both Ukrainian and Russian. The war was tearing him apart. It maybe didn't help that he and his moms were still on the move. They finally landed in Lisbon.

Masha Gessen

Luka had gone to German school in Kyiv. He was going to start attending a German school in Lisbon. Choosing Germany was a way to avoid choosing Ukraine or choosing Russia, a way to avoid choosing between his parents. I think Germany felt neutral.

Masha Gessen

Fights number three and number four-- Crimea and the globe. A few years back, Karen surprised Nadia. For his part of summer vacation, he suggested taking Luka to Crimea. Crimea had been under Russian occupation for several years. Once upon a time, it had been a vacation destination for both Russians and Ukrainians. But after the occupation, Crimea was off limits for Ukrainians.

Masha Gessen

Imagine you live in a house and one day someone comes in with a gun and just takes over the second floor. And it wasn't a bunch of empty rooms. Your cousin was living there. Now your cousin isn't allowed to talk to you. And suddenly, your friend goes, "Hey, let's go visit the guy who's living on the second floor of your house. I've always liked the view from there."

Masha Gessen

He really couldn't see what the big deal was. They'd go there, support the local economy. After all, the people of Crimea weren't to blame for being occupied.

Masha Gessen

That worked. The Crimean vacation was averted. But then came the globe. When Russia occupied Crimea, it printed up new maps and made new globes that labeled Crimea as part of Russia. And as Nadia recalls, Karen and his boyfriend were coming for a visit and bringing a globe as a present for Luka. And on the plane, they realized that this is a Russian globe. It showed Crimea as a part of Russia. This would be a problem when they'd land in Ukraine and have to go through customs.

Masha Gessen

They left the airport. They took a taxi to Nadia's house. They gave the globe to Luka, and they told the story of how they had this realization on the plane and were stuck with the globe.

Masha Gessen

The globe was Luka's, but it was Nadia who felt stuck with it.

Masha Gessen

You know how people remember important events in completely different ways? In Karen's version of the story, there was no globe on the airplane, no fretting about customs. But there was a globe-- until there wasn't.

Masha Gessen

Fight number five-- Bucha. When the full scale invasion began, it began with the unimaginable. Almost immediately, Russian tanks were right outside of Kyiv. Russian troops occupied the Western suburbs. Ukrainians, fighting to keep them out of the city, blew up the bridge that connected the Western suburbs to Kyiv.

And that bridge? It's just a short walk from Nadia's house. Their town borders Bucha, a place that's become synonymous with Russian war crimes. Nadia, her girlfriend, Sophie, and Luka were watching the invasion from a distance. And they were sick with worry because that house was not empty. Nadia's father and Sophie's mother were there, along with two pugs and several cats.

Were they safe? Were they alive? Nadia posted on Facebook-- "We haven't heard from our parents in four days. I don't know how they're doing for food and water. They had a bit in reserve. I think they're probably afraid to fire up the stove. Is there anyone in the area who could show them a safe way out?"

Nadia's father and Sophie's mother were the last people remaining in their gated community. They hung blankets over the windows. They had no electricity. And yes, they were scared.

And here's the thing their daughters could not imagine-- they were in love. They'd gotten together. They lived by candlelight. They made a fire in the fireplace and cooked shishkebab. When the shelling was heavy, they lay in bed holding each other and felt the house rock back and forth.

Finally, Nadia got hold of some Ukrainian soldiers in the area who told her there was a way out and they'd help. The soldiers came to the house and told Nadia's father-- let's call him Alex-- he had half an hour to pack.

Masha Gessen

They also brought the two pugs. They left the cats behind with lots of food. They drove into Kyiv, where they were joined by another couple and another pug. By this time, the car was so tightly packed, with stuff on top of people and pugs on top of stuff, the doors could only be closed from the outside.

Masha Gessen

Alex dropped off Lena and the other couple and the male pug in Western Ukraine and continued on to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, where he picked up Nadia for the drive through the rest of Europe.

Masha Gessen

Nadia disposed of some of the junk, including the giant IKEA Buddha, almost as soon as she got in the car. Then they kept driving.

Masha Gessen

Ukrainian troops had just entered Bucha after a month of Russian occupation. And what they saw was bodies-- bodies lying across sidewalks, bodies in the middle of the street, bodies with their hands tied behind their backs, demolished and burnt out houses, the charred remains of tanks, and more bodies of ordinary residents of Bucha who had been executed. These were pictures of streets Nadia and her father knew intimately. There was a park in Bucha where Nadia used to take Luka.

So Nadia was in the passenger seat, looking at her phone and seeing photos of the bodies. Then she and her father switched. She took the wheel.

Masha Gessen

Alex is Russian. He moved to Ukraine with Nadia 20 years ago. They built a house together, and he loved it. Now he was saying, "who knows if what you're reading is true. Or if it's true, is it the only truth? And anyway, things are never so black and white."

Masha Gessen

By suggesting that maybe things aren't so clear, so black and white, so knowable, Alex was, in fact, doing what Russian propaganda does. Its main message is that no one really knows what happened. If you weren't there, you can't judge. Everyone has a vested interest in everything. No one is a reliable source. It provides people with a myriad of ways to avoid the truth and no way to know it. But, of course, Alex was there. He had just been there.

Masha Gessen

So this was happening while they were driving through Spain, Nadia behind the wheel, reeling from the photos from Bucha that she had just seen; and Alex in the passenger seat, arguing his way out of believing that the atrocities actually happened. And the thing is, Nadia and her father are very close. They moved to Ukraine 20 years ago together because Alex wanted to try living there.

They built that house together. They lived together. And she had just lived through the hell of not knowing if he was alive or dead. And now these pictures from Bucha, they showed how close the danger had been and just how awful. And this was the moment Alex chose to use the language of Russian propaganda and say maybe things were not so black and white?

Masha Gessen

"If you weren't my father."

Masha Gessen

That's Russian for "blood is thicker than water."

Masha Gessen

They kept driving in silence.

Ira Glass

Masha Gessen. Coming up, after sending bombs and troops near to Nadia's house outside Kyiv, Russia sends her a bill. That's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, "Eight Fights." If you're just tuning in, Masha Gessen is telling the story of one of the many families who have people on both sides of the border between Russia and Ukraine and the family fights they've gotten into since the Russian invasion. So far, Masha's friend Nadia has fought with her kid's dad, with her own father. Masha picks up where we left off.

Masha Gessen

Fight number six-- about giving money to the Russian government. By spring of last year, a couple of months into the war, something changed in Nadia. Gone was the person who avoided fights. It was almost as if she wanted confrontation. And it so happened that at this time, notices from the Russian authorities started arriving at Nadia's mother's apartment in Moscow, indicating that Nadia needed to pay a fine.

This was a fine she had already paid. She had a receipt. But the Russian state which was bombing Ukraine wanted more of Nadia's money.

Masha Gessen

Nadia wanted her mother to do something about it. Nadia demanded that she go to the tax office and appeal the fine. She wanted her 70-year-old, five-foot-tall mother to go up against the Russian bureaucracy over less than $100. And she wouldn't let it go. She kept calling.

Her mother understood why Nadia was upset. She opposes the war too. But she is Russian, and she looked at this fine the way a Muscovite does. She thought Nadia should forget about it.

Masha Gessen

She's saying, "I mean, I live here. All my taxes, all my money, already goes to them anyway. So it's not a big deal for me." Nadia knows that her mother opposes the war. But that's just the thing that's driving her crazy, that her mother is so resigned.

Masha Gessen

Fight number seven-- the Nice showdown. Five months into the war, Karen took Luka on vacation to Nice, to the beach. I can sort of imagine how Karen was feeling. He spent five months in shock and in a scramble-- emigrating, reorienting his professional life. And now here he was on vacation, in France.

The buildings in Nice are white. The sea and the sky are blue. And even the ships, also white, look like they are there to complete the postcard view. Nice is a place a lot of people from the Russian Empire had gone to about 100 years earlier, fleeing the revolution and Civil War. Karen must have imagined that they experienced the same combination of feeling dislocated and soothed by the beauty of it all.

He took a picture of Luka at an outdoor restaurant table, his blond hair blowing against the blue, blue sky. And he sent it to Nadia with the caption-- "The latest wave of Russian immigrants in Nice." Russian immigrants. He wrote "Russian immigrants."

Masha Gessen

By this, Karen meant that ethnically he himself wasn't Russian. And anyway, as they'd already discussed, this whole topic of nationality was messy.

Masha Gessen

Everything Nadia had kept bottled up for the last few months, for the last dozen years, came pouring out.

She pulls up the photo from Nice and her first text.

Masha Gessen

She brings up the Crimea vacation, the globe--

Masha Gessen

I asked Karen to read his side of the conversation.

Masha Gessen

They had profoundly different recollections of some of the conversations they'd had early on in their relationship. Karen remembered Nadia making fun of some aspects of Ukrainian culture. Nadia remembered herself delighting in it. Now, Karen was the one who didn't want to fight. He texted back.

Masha Gessen

But Nadia couldn't stop.

Masha Gessen

Now, Karen asked himself why he had taken these ideas for granted, even why he-- a Greek-Jewish-Armenian Russian-- had never questioned speaking the Russian language?

Masha Gessen

And also, why had he spent so much time and effort insisting that Nadia and Luka were Russian?

Masha Gessen

Karen is a journalist and an LGBTQ activist-- two things the Russian government hates most. That's why he's been designated a foreign agent. Nadia and Karen both felt better after that Nice fight. They'd cleared the air. Nadia felt heard.

Karen felt like he'd understood something. For one thing, he understood why Nadia said that she and Luka were Ukrainian and how important that was. Their relationship improved. And also, a new Nadia had emerged-- one who told people what she really thought-- except when she didn't.

Masha Gessen

Number eight-- the fight that wasn't. Nadia comes from a long line of diplomats. Her grandparents were diplomats, and her mother really hoped Nadia would be a diplomat too, which brings me to Nadia's stepfather-- the man who was present for most of Nadia's childhood.

Nadia adored him. She calls him Dad. She never called Alex that. Long after he and Nadia's mother divorced, they stayed in touch. As Nadia became an adult, they spoke less often. But every time he called, it was like they'd seen each other just yesterday.

And he was also a diplomat. In fact, he still is a diplomat, a Russian diplomat who is still working in a high post. And after the war started, and they fled to Lisbon, and she got Alex out of Ukraine, Nadia was starting to dread her dad's phone call-- the call she'd always looked forward to.

Her birthday's at the end of May, and he always called. This time, she'd have to assume that their conversation was monitored. So if she told him what had been happening for her since the war began. Even if all he did was listen, that could get him in trouble.

But what if he didn't just listen? What if he said the sort of thing a man in his position is expected to say-- defending the invasion, justifying it. She was scared he'd say something unforgivable. She was scared she'd say something that would get him in trouble. She was also maybe scared she'd say nothing and regret it.

Masha Gessen

He didn't call.

I thought this would be a story about how war makes everything black and white. It does. I've seen it. And everyone you heard from in this episode has seen it. Long-suppressed disagreements become fights to the death. Fuzzy lines turn into firm boundaries. Nothing is left unsaid. It's true.

Most Ukrainians I have interviewed in a year and a half of covering the war have heartbreaking stories about their relationships with family in Russia. But who was I kidding? When are family conflicts ever resolved decisively? When are family stories ever black and white?

Nadia, for instance, could have a weeks-long fight with her mom about giving less than $100 to the Russian government. She contemplated throwing her father out of the car for being unable to face the war crimes in Bucha. She flew into a rage in response to the way Karen captioned a photo of Luka. But she wasn't going to say a word to her stepdad who is actually serving the Russian state?

Masha Gessen

An epilogue-- the Russian-Ukrainian war has been going on for more than 500 days. Nadia, Sophie, and Luka are still living in Lisbon. Karen is in Berlin. A few weeks ago, the Russian government added him to its list of extremists and terrorists. This means that he will be arrested if he ever tries to go back to Russia.

When the announcement came out, Nadia called him and said, "You're one of us now." Alex and Lena, Nadia's father and Sophie's mother returned to Ukraine after Russian troops were pushed back from Kyiv. They've fixed up the house and taken the blankets off the windows. They're still very much in love. The cats weathered their absence fine.

The rest of this epilogue is going to be about Luka because most of these fights were about him. Luka turned 12 earlier this year. He wanted to get a Harry Potter cake to bring to school. Then Nadia suggested they get a blue and yellow one instead-- the colors of the Ukrainian flag. And he agreed.

When Luka heard that I was interviewing his parents, he volunteered to talk to me. But when I asked him about specific conflicts from the past, the vyshyvanka fight, the Crimean vacation fight, the globe fight, he drew a blank.

Masha Gessen

The Ukrainian flag cake was Nadia's idea, but Luka has been standing up for the Ukrainian flag in his own way. He plays video games online with other Russian-speaking kids.

Masha Gessen

A year and a half ago, so many things about Luka and his life were contested. Where was he going to go if a war began and for how long? Who was he-- Russian, Ukrainian, both, German? Now, he's Ukrainian-- but a Ukrainian who plans to live in Germany when he grows up. If he has children, he will raise them speaking Ukrainian. He told me, though, that he may need to hire a tutor.

Ira Glass

Masha Gessen is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of several books, including the Future is History.

Masha's story in today's program was produced by Valerie Kipnis and some Russian journalists-- Andrey Borzenko and Lika Kremer. They're co-founders of the podcast company Libo/Libo which makes podcasts in Russian. This story is a co-production with them, our first. Their website libolibo.me.

The people who put together today's program include Bim Adewunmi, James Bennett II, Zoe Chace, Michael Comite, Aviva DeKornfeld, Cassie Howley, Seth Lind, Stowe Nelson, Ryan Rumery, Alissa Shipp, Ike Sriskandarajah, Marisa Robertson-Texter, Matt Tierney, Nancy Updike, Diane Wu. Our Managing Editor is Sarah Abdurrahman. Our Senior Editor is David Kestenbaum. Our Executive Editor is Emanuel Berry.

Special thanks today to Misha Galkin and Mark Kipnis, who you heard doing English voiceovers. Pyotr Ruzavin, Sofi Pashkual and her mom, Yelena Vernigora, Yana Mandrikina, and Stephen Steinberg. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. You can stream our archive of over 800 episodes for absolutely free. Also, we have on there now new merch, including genuinely wonderful Torey Mala-T-shirts. Take a look-- you'll see what I'm talking about.

Again, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Special thanks as always to our program's confounder, Mr. Torey Malatia. He told me recently, "That's it. No more pasta. No more rewatching The Godfather. No more gabagool."

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.