"*Every* bond between Ukrainians & Russians—familial, cultural, historical—is being broken."

From British journalist Neil Hauer; unsurprising, but still worth reading, I think.

From Hauer's Twitter thread:

Something I've noticed over the past week or so here: almost every Ukrainian I spoke to has made it clear that they blame not only Putin, but the average Russian as much (or more) for this war. The view is: we overthrew our corrupt government, and they accept their murderous one.

The amount of animosity from the average Ukrainian towards the average Russian is already huge and growing more with every single new airstrike, every new civilian death. The effects of this war will last for generations.

And I'm saying this from Kharkiv [in the Eastern Ukraine, which is more Russian-speaking than much of the rest of the country -EV]. I think I saw more virulently anti-Russian views here than anywhere else in the country. The sense of betrayal here, of 'how could they possibly do this to *us*', is incredible.

The people we watched crawl out of the rubble today told us their relatives in Moscow didn't believe them. Videos of their destroyed home were met with 'it's a fake' or 'Nazis did it.' *Every* bond between Ukrainians & Russians—familial, cultural, historical—is being broken.

For two poems on this, from 2014 (and consider how much worse things are now), see "Together we christened our children" and "We will never be brothers."