‘I Curse You’: War in Ukraine Has Created Hatred That Will Last for Generations

“Why did you kill him?” a middle-aged woman screamed after her son died in a Russian missile attack on an apartment block in eastern Ukraine last month.

“What did you do to my son?” she continued as two men held her back from lashing out in anger. Addressing Russian President Vladimir Putin via TV cameras that were capturing the devastating scenes behind her, she shouted: “I curse you to the seventh generation.”

The video from Dnipro, played on stations around the world, was not just an image of one grieving mother but also a symbol of the new visceral hatred that millions of Ukrainians feel towards Putin, Russia and – in many cases – the Russian public.

Before the full-scale invasion one year ago, but after the annexation of Crimea and years of Kremlin-backed conflict in the east of Ukraine, around a third of Ukrainians still had positive feelings towards Russia, according to a survey taken just weeks before Russia launched its attack. 

Despite Russia’s partial invasion in 2014, cultural and linguistic ties went deep: swathes of Ukraine, especially in the south and east of the country, are majority Russian speaking, and many Ukrainians had friends and relatives across the border. 

But if Putin hoped that his troops would be welcomed by what he terms their fellow “Slavic peoples,” he was badly mistaken. Any remaining warm sentiment has given way to anger. Just two percent of Ukrainians now have a positive view of Moscow, according to polls.

Kharkiv, in the east, has historically been one of the biggest Russian-speaking cities in the world, but now many citizens are renouncing their once primary language and embracing Ukrainian as part of the adoption of a stronger Ukrainian identity.

This division between the neighbouring countries will likely last for generations, with echoes of Northern Ireland’s troubles in border areas where some of the population still side with – or have collaborated with – Moscow.

In these eastern areas there are some people “who are so clearly and publicly pro-Russian that the question is stark: what place could they have in a society ravaged and traumatised by Russia?” says Brian Milakovsky, a US-born analyst who worked for years in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, which has seen heavy fighting.

“I don't advocate mass repression or deportation, but I'm genuinely baffled myself,” he told VICE World News. “My own anger at certain individuals in Luhansk region [in Donbas] makes me understand that their reintegration will be hard to impossible. Ukraine has a huge challenge ahead.”

“It will take generations to pass to see that Russians have changed,” said Anna Akage, a 39-year-old who grew up in Kyiv during the final years of the Soviet Union. “I would need to see people acknowledge the fact they were wrong, and then for them to die, and for their children to grow up with different mindsets. Then we can start talking.”

Akage, who currently lives in France, said she always knew that Ukraine was “different” from Russia but that she never felt any hatred towards Russians before the war. 

As she raced to evacuate her mother, daughter and nephew from the country in the first weeks after the invasion, her feelings of rage were focused on Putin.

But as the death and destruction continued, that hatred shifted towards the Russian people more generally. 

“Can I hate 140 million people? Yes, I can… The government is the product of the nation, the result of the choices people make,” no matter how impoverished or subject to state propaganda they may be, she said. 

“There is a very strong hate and honestly it is growing with every day, because you see the way these people support what is happening.” 

Surveys have consistently suggested that around three quarters of Russians do support the war, though some have treated the figures with scepticism as people may be unlikely to share their true feelings with pollsters in an increasingly authoritarian environment. Many have fled the country in protest or fear of mobilisation, and some dissenting voices remain in Russia. 

Shortly after the invasion, Akage started work as a receptionist at an upmarket hotel in France. Occasionally, Russians would check in. “I had to smile at them, because I’m a receptionist, I had to talk to them and be nice. After that I felt like I could not breathe, as if I was being choked.” 

But Akage, who hopes to return to Kyiv to work at an NGO once the current stage of the conflict is over, says she does not harbour a desire for vengeance against Russia. Despite her feelings towards Russian guests at the hotel, her best friend is Russian but she no longer lives in the country and has long denounced the Putin regime.

Instead, Akage wants justice and security: to see the perpetrators put on trial and a heavily militarised zone at Ukraine’s eastern border.

These came to a head in the early days of the conflict, after her grandmother, in her 80s and suffering from Parkinson’s, was evacuated across the border to Hungary. She died less than 24 hours later. 

“I remember the strongest feeling of hatred that I’ve ever felt was at her funeral,” Voshchevska said speaking to VICE World News by phone.

“I had this visceral feeling of hatred towards the people who made this happen, who made my grandma end her days in the way she did, and not peacefully in her country surrounded by family.”

Voshchevska, who is currently based with her family in London, said she has led courses focused on “empathy and hope” as part of her human rights work, but “it becomes quite hard to have those things when you see what is happening in your home.”

She suggests that Russians will have to acknowledge collective responsibility for the bloodshed if there is to be resolution between the neighbours at any point. “Obviously this can only come once they get rid of their government and everything attached to it. And once they get rid of, or acknowledge, their imperial legacy,” she said.  

Other activists have gone further, calling for Russia to be partitioned and demilitarised once the war is over.

Like many others in Ukraine, Voshchevska grew up speaking Russian with her family but has made an effort to switch to communication in Ukrainian over the last year. She has Russian friends but now has “very clear red lines” about what she will accept from them. 

“If they still live in Russia, or will ever go back to Russia since [the full-scale invasion], I will never speak to them again.” 

And she reserves a particular anger for Westerners who repeat Russian state propaganda lines without any experience of what is happening on the ground in Ukraine, especially the claim that Russia was provoked into war because of Nato expansion. 

“It removes Ukrainian agency… it ignores centuries of oppression that we’ve gone through at the hands of the Russian empire and the Soviet Union.” 

He fought in the battle for Kyiv early in the war and since then has seen friends and colleagues die or sustain life-changing injuries at the hands of Russian forces. 

The deaths most engraved in his memory are those of civilians, like a woman he knew in her 30s who were killed with her young family by a Russian missile strike while on the streets of the capital. “When you are a soldier, you know it might happen. When you are an ordinary person, just living life, it is hard to imagine,” he told VICE World News by phone.

But his hatred is targeted at Russian authorities, soldiers, and “the people sending the missiles” rather than the Russian public. “It is not a popular thing to say, but I do not hate Russians,” he said, acknowledging that many in Kyiv now do. “You must remember that this is also a huge tragedy for Russia. I hate corrupt politicians and corrupt systems.”

Even having witnessed some of the worst of the brutality first hand, he does not believe that Ukraine needs to seek revenge against Russia. Like others interviewed for this story, he wants to see the perpetrators tried for war crimes and Russia’s total ouster from Ukraine’s territory. 

“I know that some people do want revenge. But Ukrainians by character are quite happy, quite kind. You can hate while you are in the trenches but that doesn’t turn you into a hateful person afterwards. 

“We don’t need to have a bloody massacre after the war, killing Russians because they killed Ukrainians. Whatever has happened, we want to be better than that.”