“I didn’t want to leave Moscow in 2015, it was my husband’s decision. His intuition must be better than mine.

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I grew up in the Soviet Union. A sudden enemy attack, a war, was something all Soviet children were scared of. But we never ever expected our own country to become the aggressor. It’s like waking up in some upside down world.

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Do you remember this series, where a policewoman finds out that the killer of her best friend’s teenage son is her own husband, a loving father of their two kids? That is about how I’m feeling. “How could you not know?”

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I’m very Russian on the inside: tea, snow, Tolstoyevsky. On the outside I teach my students Russian language and Russian literature and write poetry myself in my native language. But no part of me associates with fighting Ukraine.

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I was brought up by my two grandmothers, both telling me stories of pre-revolutionary Russia, so my Russia is my ancestors. I am glad that they didn’t live to see this shame”.