Photo: Jean-Michel Shcherbak/Instagram
His mother, hetold CNN on Monday, no longer talks to him because of his outspoken opposition to Russia’s invasion.
“I don’t communicate with Russophobes and traitors to the motherland,” he said she told him in a message he then shared with the network. “I sincerely wish you would give up your Russian passport and leave this country in any direction. You are no longer my son. There will be no traitors in my family.”
Shcherbak said the rift began after he decided to share what Russian forces, under PresidentVladimir Putin’s direction, are doing in Ukraine, where thousands have died in the fighting that began in late February.
Shcherbak said he learned the truth about the war from Ukrainian friends in the country he’s visited “a few times,” including most recently in the fall.
“I woke up on the 24th of February, I turned on my phone and I got messages from a few of my friends from Ukraine,” Shcherbak told CNN. “They said that Russia is bombing Ukraine right now.”
His friends' accounts of the attacks didn’t match reports from Russian state media, which typically parrots the Kremlin’s stance that its forces do not target civilians but rather are engaged in a special military operation intended to take out Ukraine’s military capabilities and neutralize far-right nationalist leaders in Kyiv, the capital.
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The juxtaposition of what his friends were seeing and what Russian media was reporting could be jarring for Russians without access to international or independent media.
“It’s crazy but people don’t have opportunity — like ways to get news,” Shcherbak told CNN, citing closures of independent media organizations and blocking of social media platforms in Russia.
Despite being cut off from family in Russia, Shcherbak told his mom in an Instagram post that he would never do to his children what she has done to him but said she can reach out if she ever wants to talk to her son,according to Insider, citing his social media.
Jean-Michel Shcherbak/Instagram
Shcherbak is not alone in his predicament. A woman in Ukrainetold the BBCin March that her family didn’t believe her when she said civilians and children are dying in Russian attacks.
Another UkrainiantoldThe New York Timeshis father in Russia became angry during a phone call when told about the extent of the fighting. “There are Russian soldiers there helping people,” the man said his father told him. “They give them warm clothes and food.”
Shcherbak said people outside Russian cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg are particularly susceptible to misinformation about the war.
source: people.com
