Not long after Russia invaded Ukraine, Elena Doronina ran into a fellow Russian-speaking neighbour in the coastal city of Sunny Isles Beach, Florida, eager to relay her view of the situation.
Doronina is from Kherson, Ukraine — a town that was brutally attacked early on in the war and has since fallen under Russian occupation. Her Sunny Isles neighbour is from Russia.
Instantly, Doronina said, it became clear that despite residing in the same Florida community, they were living in two different realities. Doronina was horrified by Vladimir Putin’s increasingly gruesome tactics in his invasion of Ukraine, while her neighbour supported Russia’s war.