Families at war: how toxic state TV widens generational divide

WHEN Elmira Khalitova picked up the phone to a call from her distressed aunt last week, it took her a second to process what she was being told.

The police were at the door of Ms Khalitova’s home in Moscow and threatening to break it down, her aunt said. They wanted to arrest her for “calling for the killing of Russians”.

It didn’t make sense. Who had reported her? Then her aunt explained – her father had shopped his own daughter to the authorities for posting anti-war messages on social media.

“I was surprised the police even bothered to respond to this nonsense,” she said. Her story is just one of many in Russia today, a reflection of the deep generational divisions exposed by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

While younger Russians have grown up with access to a wide range of media and are more critical of Moscow’s version of events, their elders rely on tightly controlled state TV.

Long the primary source of Kremlin propaganda, it has kicked into another gear recently, portraying what the government calls its “special operation” as a necessity and pumping out lies.

Some of its most persuasive pundits even depict Moscow as the underdog. “We’re fighting against Nato,” Margarita Simonyan, the influential editor-inchief of RT, said on state TV last week to explain why the war has taken so long. “It’s not that easy for Russia to stand alone against such a mighty opponent.”

It’s a toxic narrative that is increasingly leading to families such as Ms Khalitova’s turning on themselves. Even before the war, the 21-year old history major from Moscow, had a difficult relationship with her father. He was a longtime fan of Russian protagonist-in-chief Vladimir Solovyev, who urged the army to use all of its firepower to flatten Ukrainian cities.

She used to attend opposition rallies but never expected him to report her to the police. “I used to try to change [my family’s] minds about things,” she said. “Now it’s dangerous. An acquaintance wrote on my social media recently that my dad did the right thing.”

In some cases the pull of state propaganda is so strong that people even refuse to believe accounts of the war from their own relatives in Ukraine.

When air raid sirens first sounded in Kyiv after the invasion on Feb 24, Misha Katsurin called his father in Russia, and was shocked by the response.

“I told him about what happened – and Dad replied that it’s all rubbish, that there’s no war and that Russians are saving us from Nazis who are using people as a human shield,” said Mr Katsurin, a popular food blogger and restaurateur, in an Instagram post.

That post quickly went viral with other Ukrainians and Russians sharing similar stories.

Mr Katsurin launched a website called “Dad, believe me” featuring an extensive manual for how to engage with people brainwashed by antiUkrainian messages. Tips include trying not to get emotional and hearing out their argument in full.

For some Russian families, however, the solution for now is to avoid talking about politics altogether.

“State TV has been working hard all those years: we underestimated their influence on the people,” said Diana Khachaturyan, a former journalist at an independent Russian newspaper.

“I used to send (my family) links to independent journalism. It’s impossible to break down this wall now. This is about the hatred that state TV has been cultivating for years, and it’s coming to the surface.”

‘This is about the hatred that state TV has been cultivating for years – and it’s coming to the surface’