Identity:

1433:  Her story demonstrates the idea that certain aspects of identity only become a concern in times of crisis. Whether her husband had concealed his beliefs or she had simply overlooked them, they weren’t an issue during peacetime. They become an issue when simple differences in opinion become questions of whether a nation will survive, a language die out, a culture be erased, or a history rewritten. Perhaps once these felt like distant possibilities. But in wartime, the erasure of deeply held parts of identity feels real, and differing beliefs come to feel like betrayal.

Place:

1433: Throughout her testimony, she uses language that frames the emotional displacement with her husband through physicality -- a kind of separation or barrier, “It turned out that I, the children, were on one side of the barricade, and my husband was on the other.” This metaphor captures how drifting apart emotionally can lead to the creation of physical distance -- as shown by her husband staying behind when she decided to leave with her daughter.

289: This author speaks of how she is torn between whether it would be right for her to leave or stay in a country she feels deep connection and loyalty to. A large part of her identity feels tied to being in Ukraine, having a sense of self tied to a specific place can make leaving feel like a self-betrayal. But, her feelings of outward betrayal also comes from her own community.

323: Distance plays a key role in this testimony. The friend of the author has since moved from her hometown to Moscow. This distance has created a detachment from her hometown, as well as placed her in a different media environment. She is now in an area where those around her are not directly affected by the realities of the war in Ukraine the same way the author is. This distance and detachment have resulted in ambivalence, and the lack of being able to properly empathize with the realities the author of the testimony is living through daily. Thus, the author feels betrayed as she believed her and her friend had a shared identity -- that her friend would have more of a reaction to the destruction.

Distance creating estrangement is a somewhat common factor is many cases relating to interpersonal rifts during the war. One study highlights how the breakdown of relationships is frequently mentioned in connection with distant relatives -- particularly in cases where friends, family, or colleagues living in Russia appear more inclined to trust Russian news sources over the firsthand accounts of those experiencing the war in Ukraine (Tytarenko et al., 2023).

328: The author of this testimony is seen as a traitor for leaving during the war. Her relatives condemn her for seeking safety, feeling betrayed that she left while they remained in occupied territory. They face harsh realities and trauma, while she gets to escape with her daughter. The act of escaping becomes an emotional and ideological fracture. For the rest of them, her absence is abandonment, a refusal to share a common pain and responsibility. This testimony shows how war distorts ideas of loyalty. It presents a question of what it is to remain, to flee, and who determines what constitutes betrayal when safety is on the line.

Language:

289: The author of this testimony feels betrayed by Ukrainians as a whole for not “undergoing a transformation” to preemptively stop a full-scale war, but more deeply she feels she lives in a “Russified city”. She speaks of how she rarely hears the Ukrainian language, and well it hadn’t bothered her before, it now makes her angry. This anger comes from feeling that those who speak Russian or continue to engage with their culture. Though she states she will keep her Russian-speaking friends, she makes it clear she will not befriend any more. She has stopped speaking Russian herself, as she sees speaking Ukrainian as a part of her identity now. Those who refuse to make the switch have thus in a way betrayed what she believes to be imperative to Ukrainian identity. She would not be the only one to feel this way though, according to Averbuch (2023), language in particular has become a fault line within the country, with some interpreting linguistic choice as a declaration of allegiances. It is not a new view that a switch from Russian to Ukrainian becomes vital in preserving one’s identity.

Memory:

323: This testimony shows how propaganda, views on history and distance from tragedy can shape even one’s memory of a place. This is highlighted in how when the author first reached out to explain the destruction of their shared hometown, her friend from Moscow replied she “did not remember how everything was there”.