By Deborah Bloom

PORTLAND (Ore.) – Andrey Nokhrin, a Russian television editor, sent his mother from Moscow a video clip showing him interrupting a Russian state-run bulletin. He held up a sign to protest the invasion of Ukraine and shouted slogans.

Marina Ovsyannikova told Reuters in an earlier month that the editor hoped that Ovsyannikova’s protest would make Russians more open to propagandism.

According to Nokhrin, his mother claimed that the protest was fake and staged on a greenscreen.

This is one example of Russian Americans sending to Russia their accounts about the conflict in Ukraine. These reports are produced by Western media outlets, which contrasts with Russian state media reporting. Interviews conducted by Reuters with eleven Russian Americans indicate that Russians are still skeptical of the conflict in Ukraine.

Nokhrin, 37 years old IT entrepreneur said “The propaganda there works very good.” “They have been assured that this peacemaking operation is possible and they really, truly believe it.”

State TV, which is the most important source of news in Russia for many million of Russians follows closely the Kremlin line. Russia was required to act against Ukraine to demilitarize the country and “denazify it” and protect Russian-speakers from what the Kremlin refers to as “genocide.”

Russia has passed an earlier in the month a law banning the public dissemination of intentionally false information regarding the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. The maximum sentence for offenders is 15 years imprisonment.

Russian state TV refused to respond to Reuters’s request for comment. The Kremlin did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

Reuters spoke to Russian Americans that were interviewed and said that they use messaging apps WhatsApp and Telegram to communicate with loved ones and share material from other news websites.

Nokhrin sent photos to his family of wounded Ukrainian children and dead Russian soldiers. He also included pictures from bombed out apartments and hospitals. His mother was sent the link to a news website that aggregates information about Ukraine from various news websites and then translates it into Russian. WhatsApp was his preferred method of communicating with his mother. The YouTube clip, which featured Russia’s independent news broadcaster TV Rain, signed off with the words “No to War.”

Reuters reviewed Nokhrin’s messages and interviewed others for the report and checked the authenticity of the pictures and videos they sent. Reuters couldn’t interview relatives in Russia for verification of the conversations.

Nokhrin stated that the military operation was presented to them like there are Ukrainian fascists trying to subjugate the Russian people. “My mother believes (President Volodymyr Zelenskiy), an evil creature who is trying to join NATO to destroy Russia.

It’s insane for us to consider this. But when we are in Russia isolating ourselves and only seeing the government media, it truly informs our beliefs.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the United States was an “empire full of lies”, which spreads misinformation about Russia. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and other senior officials claim that Western media have misreported Ukraine’s conflict and failed repeatedly to expose the persecution of Russian speakers there.

Julia Bari (a New York City-based Insurance Broker) described the reluctance of a cousin to enter into a fraught conversation about what was occurring in Ukraine 26 years after she emigrated from Moscow.

Bari claimed that her sister is in constant contact with her cousin who lives in Russia in southwestern Russia via WhatsApp. I called Bari to tell her, “Oh my God, war’s happening,” and she closed me off. “Look, we don’t know anything,” she said. This is politics. “My anger was boiling inside so I stopped screaming.”

Bari sent what pictures she was able to find for her cousin: videos of Ukrainian children being attacked by artillery, photographs of the evacuation of orphans on trains, and photos of them sleeping in shelters.

I told her that this was real. Bari declared, “This is murder.” It was something she could not bear to witness. She would like to pretend that everything is okay.”

The international reaction has been harsh and included sweeping sanctions. This sent the ruble plummeting to new records and isolated Russia.

Bari stated that she was concerned about her cousin, whose income with Russia’s biggest state-owned businesses has been cut by 60%. The company was not named by her.

Bari stated that she believes Russia can get what it needs from China or switch production lines to itself. She is “scared for me.”

Sasha and Vitaly were a young couple who left Moscow in 2018 in order to be closer to their loved ones. They started a WhatsApp Chat with their family members after they had moved. Their contents consisted mostly of pictures of their young children. They now send out news updates and video about the invasion.

Vitaly’s mother is a Moscow-based healthcare professional who reads his stories from Russian news outlets that are posted on Telegram.

Her colleagues would then bring up the topic of war and she’d reply, “You believe this because your son has brainwashed and is currently in America.” That’s why you’re not supporting President Putin,'” Vitaly said in an interview at a café in Portland, Oregon. Vitaly stated that Vitaly was open-minded to the possibility of viewing the invasion of Ukraine in an atrocity.

Vitaly stated that his mother has, on his request, stopped speaking to his colleagues about the war. She feared she would be accused of spreading lies.