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By: Maggie
“Murderer,” Natalia wrote to her ex-husband on the day the invasion began in 2022.
“I am not a murderer,” Oleg responded.
At one point the two had presumably been in love.
But now the couple’s son, Artur, was fighting for the Ukrainian military.
And the family’s former patriarch, her ex-husband, was fighting for the Russian side.
Their story is a microcosm of the splits that have occurred all across families broken apart due to this war – and the tragic consequences that result from an unjustifiable war of aggression.
The negotiated ending of wars is a fraught process with incredible complexity. The durable, notable peace deals of the last five decades involved American negotiators that had immense expertise into each side’s grievances and flexibilities.
But the Trump administration’s approach to this war has been to vacillate between Russian talking points and occasional kind words (but not particularly helpful action) towards Ukraine. The American government – led by diplomatic newbie and real estate developer Steve Witkoff – has shown almost no understanding of the details.
And what’s been particularly absent is an understanding of how deep the animosity between Russia and Ukraine have been, and how it’s torn families apart from the very nucleus.
Any diplomacy that lacks an understanding of the deep betrayal felt within families will be doomed to fail. More than 43 percent of Ukrainians have relatives in Russia, a 2021 survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found. On top of that, 14 percent said they had distant relatives in Russia.
Many families have said they don’t recognize the relatives they once regularly talked to, likening it to speaking to brainwashed strangers. In this way, the story of Artur’s family is just one of the many, many similar situations playing out across Ukraine.
Artur’s relationship with his father was fraught even before the invasion. Oleg had left the family soon after the divorce, moving to Russia and later Russia-occupied areas in the east of Ukraine – even working as a military commander for Russia-backed forces.
Artur changed his last name so he would not have to share it with his father.
In recent years, he went by the last name ‘Asadov,’ the surname of a poet he admired. His translated texts suggest a sort of poetry lived in him:
“I will be in Kyiv
We have million people reserve
It all should rise
I will be in Kyiv… everyone goes anyway,”
–A text that Artur sent his mother when Russia invaded.
“He was so creative,” Artur’s sister Daniella recalled.
A patriotic Ukrainian with military training in his background, Artur left his career in film to sign up for the Armed Forces once again in 2022. He couldn’t look himself in the mirror otherwise – so he put down the camera and picked up a rifle.
One of Daniella’s cherished memories involves Artur finding money on the ground, and rather than buying something for himself, buying Daniella an ice cream. He was an essential figure in her life, almost parental. In some ways, he was more of a father figure to her than her own actual father.
After all, Daniella blames their father for what happened after the full-scale invasion.
She thinks that beyond the obvious patriotic motivations to fight for Ukraine, Artur was also trying to prove something to their estranged parent, sending a moral signal of sorts, to let him know the children never needed him to begin with.
“I’m so angry,” Daniella said in an interview. “If my father chose another way in life, maybe Artur didn’t choose to become a soldier and fight… Artur believed his father was a traitor.”
When Russia invaded in 2022, Oleg told his son not to join the Ukrainian military, and predicted that Kyiv would fall in just three days. Artur did so anyway.
“I don’t want to hide… I will be ashamed. It’s my city and my country… to escape it is the easiest thing to do,” Artur told his mother as Russian tanks began advancing towards Kyiv.
And as the tide of the war turned, so did the tone of their exchanges. Ukraine’s military not only repelled the Russians from the Kyiv region, but then set their sights upon liberating the Kharkiv region and other areas in eastern Ukraine, where Oleg commanded troops.
Artur sent his father videos of himself in eastern Ukraine, helping to liberate villages, mocking the idea that Kyiv would fall in 72 hours.
“Where are you? I don’t see you. What happened to three days?” Artur told his father via text message.
“Hey sister, sorry, just had a lot of work to do. Counteroffensive. Happy birthday. I wish you the best. To come back home finally. So the war is over. So you find your true love there. So he wouldn’t be a moron and asshole,” Artur said to his sister before her birthday.
Artur’s family had been closely connected with the Ukrainian military at first. Long before the full-scale invasion, his father had been a military commander stationed in Kyiv. But this life fell apart when Artur was a teenager: His parents filed for divorce and his father left for Russia.
The next thing they knew Oleg had become a military official on the other side – a turncoat who was leading Russia-backed troops in Donetsk during the first stage of the Ukraine-Russia war in 2014.
“He was a colonel, but for us, he is a simple traitor,” Natalia said.
For Daniella, her father is the worst kind of turncoat – betraying not only his own family and children, but also his country.
“Ukraine gave my father the best career. He had a great career in office; he was super famous in Ukraine. How, after this, can you join the enemy team?” Daniella said. “He cheated on my family, and in a couple of years, he cheated on Ukraine.”
When she thinks about him, Artur’s wife Karina remembers the flowers.
Artur often gave his wife flowers, especially on her birthday. Early in their relationship, he once surprised her with a bouquet of roses at the summer camp where she worked with children.
The two met through Instagram after Artur messaged her one day about her work at children’s summer camps. They began dating shortly after.
When their vacations overlapped in 2018, they planned a trip to the city of Odesa in southern Ukraine. Since then, they were essentially inseparable – until the war became the one thing that kept them apart.
Artur became a commander of the ‘Carpathian Sich’ battalion, a well-known unit in the Ukrainian military. His call sign was ‘the Saint’ because “he was such a bright person and such a good person,” Karina explained.
Filmmaker Lou Levitskyi, who worked with Artur, first learned about his strained relationship with his father when he noticed him upset at the office right before the full-scale invasion began.
At first, Artur hesitated to explain, but eventually admitted that his father was serving with the Russians. He told Lou that if the war broke out, he would take up arms for Ukraine.
“He wanted to, you know, to convince his father to change his mind,” Lou said. “It was his mission, I felt it.”
“Artur is always gonna be in my heart. I wouldn’t wish this feeling on an enemy. I never wanted this!!!!!
Artur is a fighter, no one could stop him...”
–Oleg sent Daniella these texts after finding out Artur was killed.
On April 9, 2023, Artur died on the frontlines of the very region where his father was fighting as well.
In an act of heroism, Artur decided to stay behind to man a position while covering his unit’s retreat. He was killed in a Russian attack while doing so – but his sacrifice saved the lives of four of his fellow soldiers.
Flowers seemed to follow Artur throughout his life — and in death, his family identified him by the three roses tattooed on his chest.
Hundreds of people attended Artur’s funeral.
“Everything was feeling like some kind of big, big, big error. That it shouldn’t have happened, not with him. I remember the grief and the emptiness,” Karina said.
Yet, one detail stood out in all the condolences people offered.
“It was a whole mountain of flowers,” Artur’s wife recalled.
His mother Natalia sometimes goes to his grave and screams.
“For me, it’s still really, really hard to accept. I’m still waiting for him to come back home,” she said.
And this is what the chess-game-diplomats of the world don’t understand. The war is not just about strategic interests or great powers. And it’s not about Donald Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin. It’s in these terrible traumas, spreading like a disease from village to village, as soldiers return home – or don’t.
The warring parties may come up with a ceasefire or an arrangement that ends the war for now. Maybe. But peace is more than just the cessation of violence. It’s the dropping of animosities and enmity. It’s forgiveness.
And no diplomat or president can mandate that.
When the full-scale invasion began in 2022, there were a fair number of Ukrainians who hoped it would only be a few months, that relationships could be stitched back together. That these two so-called ‘brother nations’ could somehow make up quickly.
Then came the war crimes, the torture, the stench of death.
Putin’s army has committed too many crimes, imposed too much suffering, for there to be understanding between the two sides. The result is that Ukraine and Russia will be on the verge of war for a generation to come, maybe more.
Despite having grown up in a tight household with hard-working parents in Ukraine, the war has forever shifted Daniella’s perception of her father.
How could she ever be expected to forgive him?
After all, she blames him for Artur’s decision to join the military. She feels the social pressure to speak with her father because they share blood, but resists the urge.
“You’re the enemy,” she said. “Why do I have to speak with the enemy?”
Clara Preve contributed to this report.
Featured Subscriber’s Comment:
“I think the reporting you do is outstanding.
You and your team tell such interesting, powerful, relevant stories from the front lines of democracy in Ukraine and Taiwan that remind me every time how grateful I should be for the democracy I live in and how essential the fights are against authoritarian takeover and how brave those fighting.”
By: Maggie
Tim Mak and Yevgen Kotukh on Virtual Reality and PTSD
NEWS OF THE DAY:
By: Anastasiia Kryvoruchenko
Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.
DRONE STRIKES TURKISH TANKER IN ODESA: A tanker flying the Turkish flag was hit in the Izmail port of Odesa region, AP reported. This happened after Ukraine signed an agreement on the supply of liquefied natural gas from the U.S. by Greek and Baltic operators through the Baltic and Black Seas.
As a result of the attack, Romanian authorities ordered the evacuation of two villages near Izmail on their side of the border.
Russian attacks not only create a deficit in Ukraine’s energy, but also threaten to damage the import ways and leave Ukraine without supplies from allies.
BELGIUM TO BUY KAMIKAZE DRONES TO COUNTER INTRUSIONS: Belgium has signed an agreement with a Latvian defense company to purchase kamikaze drones capable of detecting and destroying unmanned aircraft that violate the country’s airspace, Reuters reported.
The move comes in response to a series of airspace intrusions that have disrupted the operations of airports, as well as critical and military infrastructure not only in Belgium, but in a number of European countries.
Belgian officials have attributed the intrusions to Russia, while Moscow denies any involvement.
EU OFFERS UKRAINE GRANT, NOT FROZEN RUSSIAN ASSETS: The EU has drafted a letter proposing three ways to finance Ukraine’s war-torn economy, one of which is a grant of at least €90 billion that would be financed by EU member states according to the size of their GDP, Kyiv Independent reported.
Brussels proposed this approach because Belgium still refuses to transfer frozen Russian assets — most of which are held in the country — to Ukraine as reparations.
According to IMF estimates, if the war ends in 2026, Ukraine will face a deficit of more than €135 billion.
CAT OF CONFLICT:
Nastia met this peacefully sleeping cat while doing some shopping – a local shop takes care of him and provides him with a bed. He sleeps right near the entrance and greets every customer. He also has a little tip jar, to keep him fed.
Stay safe out there.
Best,
Tim
