A Russian student in Liverpool is angry at the views of his family about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Third year aerospace student Denis Skyrban, 20, tries to avoid news and politics as much as possible, but conversations about the current war are hard to avoid
Denis comes from Crimea, a region once home to a majority Crimean Tatar population that was displaced by deportations and the migration of Ukrainians and Russians into the region. Its disputed ownership between Ukraine and Russia since the latter annexed it in 2014 is in many ways a precursor to the current Russian war of invasion in Ukraine.
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His mum blames the eastward expansion of NATO to include countries like Poland, previously in Russia's orbit, for the war. But older members in Crimea, like his grandparents who watch Russian state propaganda, believe there is no war at all, "the Ukrainian president is hiding in America", or Russia has already won.
This makes Denis, who gets his news mainly from the BBC, "pretty angry", saying: "They're old for starters, they're my grandparents, but it's just absurd. It's upsetting."
The University of Liverpool student added: "I don't like politics personally, but nobody wants war really. Who wants war?"
Denis moved to the UK when he was two years old, living in Glasgow and Bristol before coming to study aerospace engineering at the University of Liverpool.
The 20-year-old comes from the "deprived village" of Lenino in eastern Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. He said his family, who sent food parcels to war-torn Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, has identified as Russian since before the USSR transferred the Black Sea peninsula from Russia to Ukraine 60 years before.
He said: "It doesn't bother me, but I feel like it does bother my family. Maybe not bother them, but they want to be part of Russia. But for me, I don't need that."
When Denis last visited in 2019, Russian helicopters and airplanes would fly overhead while he was on the beach. There was a buzz among family and friends about Russian infrastructure projects in an area known for abandoned holiday resorts and an unfinished nuclear power station. Denis said "it felt like something was happening", not least the opening of a bridge connecting Crimea to the Russian mainland on the east bank of the Kerch Strait.
In November 2018, after the bridge opened, the Russian navy seized 24 Ukrainian sailors attempting to pass through the strait on their way to the Ukrainian port of Mariupol. They were returned to Ukraine in September 2019 in a prisoner swap that included a witness of the downing of flight MH17 by Russian-backed rebels in Donetsk, Ukraine, killing 298 people in 2014.
Despite those visible, military tensions, Denis said for the most part, he doesn't feel that between him and Ukrainian people he knows in Crimea, saying: "We're all just friends."
He said: "I don't want war. I don't think anyone wants war. It's rubbish for everyone. Russia is already a pretty s*** country. It's not good for people there, and now it's going to be even worse for them."
