It started in 2014. As thousands of protestors took to the streets in Ukrainian cities in what became known as the Maidan Revolution that overthrew the pro-Kremlin Yanukovich regime, Ukraine made its fledgling steps toward democracy and Europe. Around this time, Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula and began funding Russian separatist movements in the Donbas region.
Amid this chaos, thousands of miles away in Toronto, conversations began to get heated at dinner tables and on social media groups, as immigrants from the former Soviet Union tried to make sense of what was going on back in the Old Country.
I was 17 at the time and spent my days listening intently to what was being said at home, and the arguments that my parents were having with friends. Phrases like “Krym Nash!” [A pro-Russian slogan, meaning “Crimea is ours”] became common among the guests in our home, leading them to be promptly excommunicated. I watched as my parents, who were and continue to be ardently against the Putin regime and its aggressive policies towards Ukraine and the West, fumed and lost friends as people took sides.
These fissures in the community have been exacerbated since Feb. 24, when Putin announced a “special military operation” in Ukraine. This came after months of mobilizations on the Russian-Ukrainian border and an intensified propaganda campaign that is based on historical revisionism, the rejection of Ukrainian national identity, and the proliferation of false narratives that state the administration of Volodymyr Zelensky is filled with “drug-addicted, neo-Nazis.”
Canada is home to roughly 60,000 Russian-speaking Jews, the vast majority of whom immigrated within the last 25 years. While they are by no means homogenous in their outlook, largely because they hail from different parts of the post-Soviet region, consuming Russian state-funded media is common in some of these households.
This media ranges from mostly harmless talk shows to purely propagandistic news channels, and its pro-Kremlin narratives are spreading to online information environments like Facebook and Whatsapp groups, as well as to print publications that you can find at your local deli.
As a graduate student studying how the Kremlin is targeting Canada’s Russian-speaking diasporic community via its wide network of propaganda outlets, my preliminary research suggests that these outlets can play an important role in opinion formation among this demographic. The consumption of this Kremlin-funded media, by default, creates political divisions between those who engage with Russian propaganda and those who do not.
Since the start of the war, thousands of people around the Western world have gathered for protests in support of Ukraine. Russian-speaking Jews, many of whom do not hold fond memories of their time in the Soviet Union, have nevertheless been glued to their news feeds and taken active roles in grassroots humanitarian initiatives and pro-Ukraine demonstrations.
This has certainly been the reality for Toronto-based Maria Vasserman, whose parents and grandmother are in Odesa. While the city has been relatively quiet throughout the war, each time the sirens sound, her parents are faced with the painful decision of whether they should run to a bomb shelter, or stay with their bedridden grandmother, who is unable to run for safety.
Like many people with family in the region, Vasserman has been continually refreshing the messaging app Telegram and other information sources that she trusts. While she says most of her friends are supportive of Ukraine, she has come across people who have taken the side of the Kremlin.
“Some Russians have asked me about my opinion and whether what the Russian media is saying is true, whether there are ultra-nationalists in Ukraine who are oppressing Russian-speaking communities,” said Vasserman. “I shared everything I know with them, all the historical context and facts, but I don’t know if they believe me. They’re still susceptible to this information and that’s concerning.”
Though Vasserman finds that most members of the diaspora are supportive of Ukraine, she has lost a lot of friends who live in Russia, people who are constantly engaging with Russian state media.
“I have a very close family friend in Russia, and I’ve always known he was pro-Russian, even back in 2014,” said Vasserman. “When I connected with him at the start of this war, I told him I couldn’t stop crying. He responded by saying my family does not need to hide in the bomb shelters because Russian soldiers aren’t touching civilians.”
Even though Vasserman’s friend went on to say that Ukrainian history does not exist and that it’s all part of a conspiracy to destroy Russia—a common trope repeated by Putin and Kremlin media—she says losing relationships with loved ones has been one of “the biggest losses of the war so far.”
For Anna Fainberg, a Mariupol-born Jew who lives in Vancouver, taking time to argue with people siding with the Kremlin is a “waste of time.”
Since the Russian invasion, she says her days have been filled with constant anxiety, even though she does not have any immediate family left in the region.
It has been a tremendous shock realizing that areas where she grew up, and spent part of her adult life, have now been reduced to rubble, she said.
“Seeing the destruction of the city where I was born and spent my summers, it destroys me,” Fainberg said. “I don’t understand how in the modern world, we are using force to handle diplomatic matters.”
While she says she experienced antisemitism in her youth, this does not impact the way she relates to Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. “I learned not to internalize it, it’s just like having a dog bark at you, you can just ignore it,” Fainberg said. “I know that all people are different, and there are good and bad people everywhere.”
Though Fainberg has come across individuals who are pro-Putin, she does not believe that there is much point in engaging with those who are parroting the Kremlin’s narratives about Ukraine.
“You can’t spend your life trying to convince people of such simple truths––that killing people is bad, war is bad, and lying is bad.”
Ruty Korotaev is a graduate student at the Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, who specializes in Russian media and disinformation.
