As they aid Ukrainians, Russians abroad struggle with their own identity

When Ilia heard about the exodus of Ukrainian refugees through Berlin’s main train station – a transit point for those escaping Russia’s invasion – he boarded a daylong flight from his home in Sydney, Australia, to get there.

Ilia (who prefers not to use his last name because he wants to be able to travel to Russia when needed) was born and raised in Moscow but has lived most of his adult life in Australia working as an information technology engineer. He’s part of a vibrant, mixed Russian-speaking community there, where divisions between those from Russia and Ukraine are rarely delineated, he says.

But when war in Ukraine came, he suddenly imagined that the Ukrainians he dances salsa with in his downtime would look at him differently – no longer Ilia, but “a Russian.” “It doesn’t make logical sense. I know them and they know me. But in all of this, I just feel guilty,” says Ilia, who spent two weeks of vacation at the Berlin Central Station, often at the platform as arriving trains pulled in, so that he could help orient Ukrainians in their common language of Russian.

Russians among the diaspora opposed to President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine have been at the front lines of humanitarian efforts across Europe and North America for those displaced by war – more than 5 million, according to the United Nations’ refugee agency.

They are motivated to help by the same sense of injustice felt by citizens globally about an unprovoked war, but their efforts are also driven by an affinity that is more personal. United by language, culture, and history, many families span the modern borders formed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. As they mobilize against Mr. Putin – many for the first time – some are also redefining identities that had been for decades built around a more fluid sense of ancestry and nationhood.

“[The Ukrainians] are so close to us, in language, culture, everything. Why would you attack your cousins and brothers?” asks Olga Larionova, a recruiter in Toronto who was born in Moscow. “I think it’s very hard to see how one part of your country, one part of your identity, is attacking another part of your identity. This is what I’m struggling with.”

“This shame and this dissonance”

The Russian-speaking diaspora is made of Russians who left the country before and after the fall of the Soviet Union and those who immigrated to the West from former Soviet republics. They left to escape political and religious persecution, or for economic opportunity. In daily life, many say they don’t overtly distinguish themselves by nationality. They are Russians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Uzbeks, or Moldovans, but often are called simply “Russians,” bound foremost by the Russian language.

Ms. Larionova, whose parents and sister are still in Moscow but who grew up with deep connections to Ukraine, where her father’s family is from, says that when she heard about the invasion, for days after she woke up with that sense of dread that wouldn’t lift.

Canada, home to the largest Ukrainian diaspora in the world after Russia, expanded its support to Ukrainians with a temporary Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel program to bypass lengthy immigration processes. According to government figures, between mid-March and mid-April 163,747 Ukrainians had applied, with 56,633 applications approved.

Canadians, many Russian-speaking, are organizing donation drives and raising funds to help the newcomers settle. Despite watching civil rights “shrinking and shrinking” under Mr. Putin and feeling despair over his annexation of Crimea in 2014, Ms. Larionova is only now mobilizing for the first time – contributing to various drives and offering to run errands or help new arrivals with translation services.

“I don’t know how much it helps,” she says. “I feel that a lot of Russians that I know really want to help very, very sincerely. But there’s also a deep sense of this shame and this dissonance that it’s your country and your people attacking your country and your people.”

Russian tech entrepreneur Dmitry Buterin, who was born in Chechnya, arrived in Canada in 1999 already harboring deep suspicions about Mr. Putin. Today he supports various organizations working with Ukrainians on the ground, including Ukraine DAO, Holy Water, and Second Front Ukraine. But he says the most important thing he does is speak out against Russian propaganda to counter “misinformation and misunderstanding outside of Europe especially,” says Mr. Buterin, whose family enjoys a large platform because his son Vitalik co-founded the open-source blockchain Ethereum. “I’m very passionate about helping people understand the truth.” 

He’s gotten flak for that. Indeed, throughout the diaspora, some Russian immigrants continue to support the war. An April rally in Berlin protesting discrimination against Russians drew about 1,000 people, some of whom carried displays of support for the war.

But the past months have also been disorienting for those who may have been politically indifferent before now. “I’ve seen more Russians who are very conflicted,” says Mr. Buterin. “Many who have identified with being part of Russia and all those wonderful aspects of Russian culture which do exist and we cannot deny, who identified themselves with the Russian nation, are now really lost and confused.”

Much of the world condemns Russia: Russians have been cut off from the international SWIFT banking system, its athletes have been banned from many international competitions, and countries are debating whether to stop buying its energy. And the country has lost moral authority that will be hard to regain, says Arman Mahmoudian, a political scientist at the University of South Florida. “I doubt that Russia, in decades or even more, can rebuild its influence over Russia’s backyard – the countries traditionally in its diaspora – and also in the West, which used to see Russia as a potential ally and now starts to view it as a threat.”

“The old and forgotten roots”

Washington-based policy analyst Jeanne Batalova was born in Soviet-era Ukraine, grew up in Moldova, and then moved to the United States. A decade ago, she would have described herself as “Russian” first, and then clarified that she is partly Jewish and partly Ukrainian.

Since 2014 and the pro-European Maidan protests in Kyiv, which preceded the annexation of Crimea, the order has shifted. “I say I’m American, then Ukrainian and Jewish, and partly Russian.”

Today she sees that identity change happening at a much wider scale among the Russian-speaking diaspora. “There is a significant shift in rethinking of identity where people are turning to the old and forgotten roots they never thought about,” she says.

Ms. Batalova has attended several pro-Ukrainian protests, with flags from the nations once part of the Soviet Union waving. She calls it partly an act of solidarity “against their historic oppressor.”

But for some Ukrainians, a new rift with Russians is also deep and pervasive. Andrij Melnyk, Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that “all Russians are our enemies right now.”

That trickles down to the daily lives of diaspora communities. Alex Kislicyn, who was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, but now lives in Munich, Germany, says the situation in Russia draws parallels to Germany post World War II. “Where, on one side, the terror ended, but the other side was that nobody trusted the Germans anymore,” he says. “It needs time to heal the wounds. Maybe someday this relationship will be restarted, but not right now.”

For Ilia, the Muscovite living in Australia, the ties between Russians and Ukrainians are worth fighting to preserve.

“My general feeling is I imagine that’s how Germans felt in 1939. If two of the people I tried to help here later tell themselves and their children that not all Russians are bad because they met me,” he says, “I achieved something.”