Doronina is from Kherson, Ukraine – a city that was brutally attacked early in the war and has since fallen under Russian occupation. Her neighbor on the Sunny Isles is from Russia. Immediately, Doronina said, it became clear that despite living in the same Florida community, they were living in two different realities. Doronina was terrorized by Vladimir Putin’s increasingly horrific tactics during his invasion of Ukraine, while her neighbor supported the Russian war. “He says, ‘Well, do you have a Nazi there?’ Doronina recalled what the other woman had said, apparently referring to the Russian president’s mythical claim that he was trying to “seek out” Ukraine. Doronina replied angrily: “Have you ever been there? . . . Go, take a look. “Why don’t Russian mothers whose sons were killed in Ukraine go there to get their bodies and see what their army did?” As Moscow continues its bombardment of Ukraine, dividing friends and family across the border, tensions are running high in traditionally tied post-Soviet migrant communities beyond Russia. As of 2019, approximately 1.2 million immigrants from the Soviet Union were living in the United States, according to an analysis of U.S. census data by the Institute for Immigration Policy. 392,000 of them come from Russia, while 355,000 are from Ukraine. Elena Doronina, an employee of the Matryoshka Deli Food supermarket in Sunny Isles, originally from Kherson, Ukraine, is sitting on the outside patio of the deli © Zak Bennett / FT These immigrants have largely inhabited Russian-speaking enclaves such as Brighton Beach in New York and Sunny Isles in Miami. However, while both are considered predominantly Russian – the Sunny Isles are nicknamed “Little Moscow” – they are home to a number of intertwined former Soviet communities where many residents have equal ties to Moscow and Kyiv. “For me personally, it’s a personal tragedy,” said Dmitry, the 35-year-old owner of a Miami-based hair extension company, who asked not to be named. His father is Russian, his mother Ukrainian and he shared his childhood between the two countries, he said. His name for hair extensions, which was founded long before the war, is called “Hair by Russians”. However, they sell not only Russian hair, but also Ukrainian. On the brand’s website, it has covered the logo with a blue and yellow banner and the words “We stand with Ukraine”. “People only suffer from this,” said Sergei Isakov, general manager of Kalinka, a Russian delicatessen in the Sunny Isles. Nobody wins. “Ukraine and Russia, you might say, are a Slavic people.” In addition to the emotional pressure caused by the conflict, there are financial costs. The delicacy relies on Russia for its products, but due to new restrictions on imports from the country to the US, its suppliers say they will not be able to place any more orders. The Matryoshka Deli Food supermarket in Sunny Isles. The city, known as “Little Moscow”, is home to dozens of Russian cafes, markets and shops © Zak Bennett / FT “We have no idea what will happen next. . . “We ourselves do not know what will happen tomorrow,” he said. Many companies have begun to openly show their support for Ukraine. Marky’s, Miami’s leading caviar store, has chosen to send shipments of “diapers, baby food and everything else we can find” to Ukraine, said Mark Zaslavsky, the store’s Ukrainian co-owner. Recent events have raised questions about Sunny Isles’s “Little Moscow” nickname, which Jennifer Levin, a former Sunny Isles Beach commissioner, said she would prefer to remove altogether. “What are you going to do, put all the Russians in a basket and say they are all the same?” said Levin, whose grandparents were Russian. “If you are abroad, it has many negative nuances.” Ilona Nesterova, a Miami-based real estate agent who moved to Florida from Kyiv and helped organize local relief efforts, said most of her Russian friends disagreed with the war and supported her work with Ukraine – but not all. “People have opinions. They block each other [on social media]. They say things. . . So right now the whole community is a little shaky, “said Nesterova, a former Miami and Sunny Isles model who represented Ukraine at the 2021 Mrs Universe pageant. Sergei Danilov, director of Russian America TV, and presenter Ksenia Koryakina at Russian American television studios in Miami © Zak Bennett / FT Nesterova said the morning the invasion began, she posted a message to a Facebook group of Russian-speaking brokers in Florida asking if members wanted to get involved in relief efforts. Shortly afterwards, he received a call from a Russian friend who is the team manager. “My friend, she called me and said, ‘Look, I understand anything [reaction] “It happens in your brain, but please, let ‘s keep it professional,” Nesterova recalls. “That asked me and I said, ‘How can you be silent when you see all this?’ “How wrong is all this?” Sergei Danilov, owner of Russian America TV, a 24-hour Russian-language Internet-based television station based in Florida, said it was a challenge to bridge the gap without alienating any of its viewers, about 15 percent of whom live in Russia. . Since the start of the war, the channel has seen a huge rise in viewership – many of whom were Russians seeking a more independent view of the propaganda offered by their country’s state television.
Are you personally affected by the war in Ukraine? We want to hear from you
Are you from Ukraine? Do you have friends and family in or from Ukraine whose lives have been disrupted? Or maybe you’re doing something to help these people, such as raising funds or housing people in your homes. We want to hear from you. Tell us through a short survey. “Our goal is to provide objective information, but not to intimidate our Russian viewers,” said Danilov, who moved to Miami from Moscow, where he was a metallurgist but spent some of his childhood in Kazakhstan and Latvia. . “Russian propaganda is so strong that those under its influence do not believe that it is a real military attack, a real war. “The public here rightly believes that this is a real struggle for the freedom of Ukraine.” Not everyone is happy. In Russian America TV commentary sections on YouTube and Facebook, some viewers criticized the channel for reporting on a war they did not believe existed. Meanwhile, others are attacking him because he presented a very disinfected view of the horrors of war and did nothing more to show the kinds of disasters that appear on Ukrainian television. “If we showed what the Ukrainian TV channels showed, these people [in Russia] “He would not believe us,” Danilov said.
