“... We sat in silence for a moment before I changed the topic. Since when did a political disagreement have the power to make my mother cry? How much further had my family been transformed by propaganda since I had escaped its claws? Like my parents, I had been pro-Putin once. I thought that Russia had ‘saved’ Crimea from neo-Nazi rebels, that it was the victim of a global smear campaign because the world couldn’t bear the fact that Russia is so big and oil-rich. But since I moved to the U.S. for a second bachelor’s degree and fell in love with journalism, I realized that my political views were rooted not in facts but in a lifelong exposure to the Kremlin’s propaganda machine. My family is still in Russia, and over the years, the views of my reasonable, highly educated and once liberal-leaning parents have become almost alien. Like many Russians, they believe the invasion of Ukraine is just an ‘operation to take out neo-Nazis.’ ...”
Travelers wait to board a Ukrainian bus to Kyiv, at the bus station in Krakow, Poland, on June 16.
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