Family keep war secret from elderly relative

I took the TV set away and told her it’s gone for repairs.

Nadiya Lozhkina, daughter-in-law

For 33 days of the Russian war, while images of tank columns and bombedout buildings were beamed around the world, one Ukrainian grandmother carried on her life blissfully unaware that anything was wrong.

Olena Luhova, 93, lived most of her life in the Soviet Union during a time when Russia and Ukraine were considered brotherly peoples.

So when Russia invaded the country on February 24, her relatives decided the news about the war might be too much for her to bear.

“She dropped her portable radio shortly before the invasion so it was easy to tell her it was away for repairs,” Nadiya Lozhkina, Luhova’s daughter-in-law, told Current Time, a Ukrainian TV channel.

“And then I took the TV set away and also told her it’s gone for repairs.

“I told her that the spare parts for the TV are imported so it’s going to take a while to get them.”

Although she lives in central Kyiv, Luhova barely leaves the house and is hard of hearing.

Her family also asked her neighbours not to tell her anything.

So Luhova just carried on as usual for more than a month.

She didn’t hear about the siege of Mariupol, the discovery of mass graves in Bucha, or the occupation of Kherson.

Lozhkina wrote on Facebook: “I don’t know how long I can keep it from her. She sleeps and eats well and doesn’t worry.”

The ruse lasted for 33 days until a friend finally spilled the beans.

Luhova was not impressed when she realised what her family had done.

“I was offended. I think it’s a crime,” she said in a TV interview.

She said what she had since learnt of Russian atrocities was worse than anything the Nazis did during their occupation of Ukraine eight decades earlier.

“Germans did not exactly love us . . . But they were not going around stealing from our cupboards,” she said in reference to reports of looting.

Luhova sees the war as an act of revenge by Russia.

“Russia has always viewed Ukraine as its own land,” she said.

“Ukraine simply wants to live its own life. This is our land and we want to govern our own country as we wish.”