A Phone Call with My Ukrainian Ex-Father-in-Law Blew My Mind

'Let them all die rather than become part of Gay-ropa'

My ex-father-in-law is from a tiny village in the central part of Ukraine. It’s the Ukraine that wants to be free of Moscow’s yoke. Yesterday, during a phone call, he shocked me by how powerful, and sadly poisonous the Kremlin’s propaganda can be.

Dashev

Dashev is a small village outside the regional city of Vinnytsia. It has this church, and it used to have a collective farm during Soviet times where many locals were employed.

Surrounding the village, which borders the middle of nowhere, are two monuments for the mass graves where hundreds of murdered Ukrainian Jews were buried — some dead, some still alive.

Dashev is the kind of place that you leave unless you are a farmer. The men there struggle with alcoholism and the women struggle to keep them alive; and, they till the land, plant the crops, and harvest the food they turn into daily feasts for their families. They have hands and calves as thick as gnarled knows on an old tree. Walking barefoot in the fields is common practice.

They also make the best samogon (moonshine), homemade sausages, stuffed fish, and sola that I ever ate. Dashev was a part of my life for six years while married to my ex-wife. We went and basked in the luxury of being nowhere but surrounded by the wealth of homecooked food, family, traditional Ukrainian songs, and long, lazy days.

I would often sit in the “summer kitchen,” which is what they call the wood-burning oven where they make the fish, the sausages, bread, and so much more. It is separate from the house probably because of the heat and the risk of fire. It was also close to the banya or steam bath. I loved sitting out there and listening to my wife’s grandmother, and my father-in-law’s mother, tell her stories.

She recalled as a child how after the Jews were shot and buried just outside the town, for days afterward locals saw the field moving. Her father was repressed by Stalin and eventually killed. She fell in love with her husband at the collective farm. She told me that when she hears German spoken, it makes her heart race. A lot of her father’s family died during the famines in Ukraine that Stalin let happen. She told me she always felt like Moscow hated Ukraine.

Lazy drunks

My father-in-law, Vasily, once told me that the greatest day in his life was when he finally left Dashev. As I said, it was the kind of place you left if you didn’t want to be a farmer. He moved to Leningrad and studied at a prestigious university for engineering and construction. He fell in love and got married and then the Soviet Union collapsed.

Young in 1990, he saw the collapse as a great opportunity to earn money and raise a family. He never saw the collapse as a sign that something was wrong with the Soviet Union, though. The Soviet Union was the greatest country in the world and one of the most powerful in world history in his eyes. The new freedoms of the 90s were great but the excess was something he didn’t want or need.

By the time Putin took over, he was earning a good wage thanks to a company he and a buddy founded. They were constructing and selling apartment buildings throughout the city. His partner dealt with the mafia and he took care of the construction. He raised two kids and one ended up marrying an American. He liked foreigners.

After I joined their family, it didn’t take long for him to check out my feelings about Russia’s greatness. I offered him my honest assessment and explained that I felt because of the corruption of Putin and many around him, Russia was missing out on so many other opportunities.

He was barely able to contain his anger. We argued and I quickly backpedaled and said, “Yes, Russia is one of the greatest countries ever;” that was my compromise for my then-girlfriend. I told him I could not say it was the “greatest” because I was a patriot for my land first and foremost. He accepted that and we drank another shot.

Such arguments from that evening forward were always just a careless comment or one-shot-too-many away. Like all Russians, even though he isn’t Russian but 100 percent Ukrainian — but he is Soviet — he was convinced the West was so fearful of a strong Russia that it was forever conspiring against them. Anytime anything happened in Russia that was bad and had nothing to do with the alleged West’s behind-the-scenes meddling, he would as most Russians say something like, “Oh, what, that doesn’t happen in the U.S.?”

After my wife and I divorced, our near-weekly meet-ups slowly tapered off to once a month, then twice a year, and then COVID hit. After COVID, the war started and I left. I haven’t seen Vasily in four years but I knew his love for Putin and the “most glorious country in the world, Russia,” was fully intact before the war.

I have been in touch with his sister and his mother, who is now very frail and can barely move, and it seemed that Russian troops passed through. They hid in their basement and soon they were gone. Vasily had built for his mother and family a large, well-stocked house. It was one of the best in the area. The Russians must have been in a hurry, though, as no looting took place. They hate Russians now because they have seen the suffering.

Yesterday, he and I spoke for the first time since the war began. I believed that by now his love for Putin had to have soured. His belief that Russia was the greatest and most honorable nation in the world had to have finally been wrecked. I was ready to feel bad and offer some condolences because I figured he was finally going to accept what I had been telling him all along about Putin.

My heart races from anger even now, more than 24 hours after we ended our call. We spoke for 40 minutes and it was almost like I was talking to Putin. He was angry at me and mocking in his tone that I was “afraid” to return to Russia. Things were better now in Russia he told me and he said it was all lies that foreigners were being arrested and harassed. He told me to watch out for the drag queens and the gays in “Gay-ropa.”

I didn’t want to accuse him of being a traitor to his homeland but when I mentioned the genocide being committed by Russia, he screamed into the phone that he was shocked by how stupid I had gotten thanks to Biden’s propaganda. He defended Russia’s war because Putin was brave enough to protect Ukraine from becoming a land of slaves and farmers for America. He was standing up to America. Vasily didn’t want his homeland to be overrun by drag queens and gays and that is why Putin and Russia were righteous in their mission.

He told me it breaks his heart to see Ukrainians getting bombed and fears for his mother and his other relatives but if that is what it takes to keep Ukraine free from America’s yoke, then let Russia blow up every one of the “lazy, drunk khakhli.”

So utterly in shock, and truly offended by the bullshit, I quoted a famous Russian comedy: “You need to drink less, Vasily (pits nado menshe).”

And bid him a “Do svidaniya” and hung up without waiting for his reply.

I have been replaying the conversation in my head for nearly two days now. What will it take for these people to see how morally bankrupt Russia has become?

I have no answer to that.