When her kids aren’t watching, Olga devours every piece of news she can find about the war in Ukraine. The Russian mother forces herself to look at photographs of the Ukrainians who have been killed, trying to remember the face of every child lost in her country’s four-year aggression. Speaking out has cost her friends – and left her wary of every new Russian she meets in her self-imposed exile in France.

Issued on: 22/02/2026 - 09:35Modified: 23/02/2026 - 14:26

Already in 2010, Olga* knew that she would have to leave Russia sooner rather than later. “Even back then, I didn’t feel I was living in a free country.”

Olga grew up in Moscow – a modern, privileged “bubble” where Western-style cafes buzzed with life and several flights were leaving for Europe every day – but under Vladimir Putin’s rule, she felt things were changing.

“You could feel the power of the state behind you,” she recalls. “I never expressed my opinions in public. Even sharing my thoughts with friends didn’t feel safe.”

Less than a year later, she was living in Paris, enrolled at a university as part of an exchange programme. “Officially it was for a brief period, but I already knew I was going to stay.”

She applied for French citizenship as soon as she could. Her closest friends in France were Ukrainians.

Then, in 2014, Russia invaded and annexed Crimea.

“Before that we considered ourselves to be almost the same, that Russians and Ukrainians were one people. But after 2014 that wasn’t something you could say anymore.”

‘The Motherland’

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion on Ukraine in February, 2022, Olga was shocked, but she wasn’t surprised. Her stomach turned in fear for her Ukrainian friends because deep down she knew what Putin’s imperialistic regime would be capable of.

By then, Olga had also become the mother of two little boys. And somewhere in Moscow, she had a brother who risked being mobilised.

“I called my mother to help me convince him to leave Russia. I thought she would understand, as a mother.”

The response punched the air out of her lungs.

“She said: ‘If the Motherland asks your brother to fight for her, why would he refuse?’”

Since then, Olga doesn’t discuss the war with her family, and conversations stay superficial, focused mainly on the children or the weather – just like they do when she speaks with others from back home.

In the first year of Russia’s full-scale invasion, she noticed how her Facebook friend list dwindled after every anti-war message she posted. Some of them were childhood friends.

“People in Russia are either brainwashed or afraid –I don’t know which,” she says, and describes their unquestioning loyalty “to the Motherland” as some kind of emotional dependency. “Almost like children who defend their alcoholic father, just because he’s their father.”

Still, Olga knows that her mother is, at least partly, acting out of fear.

“She deletes all my voice messages. She thinks everything is being listened to, even if it’s just about the weather. She told me ‘it would be better for everyone’.”

Feeling watched

The war is impacting her life in France, too.

Since 2022, Olga has avoided Russian events – “I never went to them very much anyway, but now I only go if it’s a very good friend’s birthday or something” – and she stays clear from Russian institutions, like the embassy and the Russian Orthodox church in Paris.

“There are cameras that monitor you – you feel it as you approach,” she says. “And I don’t want anyone trying to recruit me.”

This is also one of the reasons she is cautious whenever she meets new Russian people in France.

“I feel very uncomfortable. You never know what they think. I avoid new Russian acquaintances as much as I can.”

She has already severed contact with at least two Russian friends in Paris. One of them started sending her pro-war propaganda, “saying Ukraine wasn’t a real country and that the Ukrainian language was fake”, and refused to stop even though Olga repeatedly told her to.

“Now, if we meet in the street, we say hello. Nothing more.”

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In the first weeks following the invasion, Olga also dreaded the children’s school run. The French parents did not yet know she opposed the war. She almost wanted to carry a large sign.

“I felt like all eyes were on me, and that everyone was like: ‘What is she thinking? What side is she on?’”

The curse of a Russian passport

Over time, this feeling has hardened into something more permanent.

Olga says she no longer recognises the country printed on her passport, and plans to renounce her Russian citizenship at the first opportunity. But it involves a lot of paperwork, and would most likely require her to travel to Russia – a country she hasn’t set foot in in the past eight years.

She recently learned that her two sons are considered Russian nationals by default from birth.

“It’s horrible. I don’t want them to have any link with Russia under this regime,” she says. “They’ve never been to Russia, and I don’t know if they ever will.”

The thought weighs on her, however. "My parents are not getting younger, and as I don’t know today when and where I can meet them due to travelling challenges and the growing risk of conflict in Eastern Europe, I sometimes wonder whether I will actually see them again. This is the pain that permanently sits inside of me, and I have not yet figured a way out."

In the meantime, she tries to shield her children the best she can from the horrors her country is causing. But at night, when she has tucked both of them into bed, she opens up the Ukrainian-sourced YouTube and Telegram news channels she subscribes to, forcing herself to scroll through the faces of the many children killed.

“I can’t do much to help. But I think we should remember them. We owe them at least this one second.”

*The person's name has been changed for security reasons

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