Lost friendships are a painful price of the Ukraine war

One thing you learn about war, if you are close enough for it to touch you, is that it splits the atom. Situations and relationships that have grown over time and seem to have deep roots – a life in fact – can be blown apart in a day. Now, over two years on from the start of Vladimir Putin’s ‘special military operation’ (which came at a time when I was living in Rostov-on-Don, an hour or two from the Ukrainian border), I’m still in touch with several Russians I knew back then. We find common ground, avoid certain topics and continue the conversation. But other friendships were killed stone dead, and for very different reasons.

One was with a young student, Nikolai. Warm and friendly, he was also conservative, ex-military and seemed forever to be searching for a deeper mission in life. He was an imperialist, he told me, at a time when it seemed about as imminently threatening as saying ‘I’m a flat-earther’. When the war with Ukraine came along, he embraced it wholeheartedly – ‘You want the truth? I wish we’d done this ten years ago!’ – and was baffled at my hostility. The Ukrainians were riddled with Nazis, he said, pure and simple. They had to be dealt with for good and if he could fight for his country he would.

When we argued, he’d bombard me afterwards with YouTube clips ‘proving’ that Ukraine was a fascist snake-pit or the Bucha Massacre a Western smear. Had I been more patient at the time – a wiser adult, a better teacher – we might have closely looked together at the origins of those videos. The one showing neo-Nazi marches was eight years out of date; the one on Bucha was from a TV channel and ‘investigative journalist’ with the dodgiest of reputations.