'Of two halves' Russian-Ukrainians despise Putin for making war in their name

• Putin falsely claimed his invasion of Ukraine was in defense of ethnic Russians.
• Russians in Ukraine, though, were among those who lost everything in the brutal attacks.

BUDAPEST, Hungary — Luliia Sergeieva, a lawyer and human rights activist, grew up in a Russian-speaking home in Ukraine.

Her mother is from Russia. So is her grandmother — who was a victim of Stalin's oppression, a widow of a man who was crippled in World War II, and the daughter of a man imprisoned for eight years in Siberia.

But her ties to the motherland didn't protect her this month, when Russia rained fire down on the country she's called home her whole life.

In the early morning of February 24, Sergeieva woke in her bed to explosions. She grabbed her 6-year-old son, Simon, and fled their Kyiv home.

"I put his name in his bag, and a telephone number, in case we got separated and he got lost," Sergeieva said, through tears, at the Budapest home of a host family. "I said 'honey, we're going to have to go to grandma's place.' And he didn't even ask questions."

When they arrived at her mother's house, they realized that it was even less safe there, as that suburb is along the way the troops must travel to get to the city.

"My daughter Luliia showed up in the morning at 6 o'clock bringing her son in pajamas," Sergeieva's mother, Olga, told Insider. "That was my mother's 93rd birthday, and this was her present from Putin. She was a person who loved Russia immensely and dreamed of dying on that land."

Putin falsely claimed that his "military operation" in Ukraine was to liberate Russian-Ukrainians in the country.

Sergeieva's family — and several other Russian-Ukrainian refugees — have told Insider that the only one victimizing them is Putin himself. It is this war, though, that will leave generations of Ukrainians despising Russia, the people who live there, and it's culture.

Hard to leave

Sergeieva spent one night in a bomb shelter before making the decision to leave Ukraine with her son. She couldn't sleep at all that night because she was worried about Simon's safety.

"I lived in several countries and I had many opportunities to leave Ukraine, but I came back because I believe our country is beautiful, strong, and has a great future," Sergeieva told Insider. "Our lives our there. I didn't want to cross the border, but I did it because I am a mother, and his safety and his life is the first job I have to do."

Olga stayed behind with her mother for about a week.

She believed that the war couldn't last more than a few days before realizing they had to leave.

Sergeieva and her mother are both lawyers, and keep a close eye on the political environment.

Still, they never imagined bombs landing in her city.

"I'm trying to keep myself away from hatred of the Russian nation. It's very hard and I don't know how long I can keep it up," she said.

Many people in Ukraine are bi-or-triligual, speaking both Russian and Ukrainian.

Now, in protest of Putin's actions and a war he started in their name, some are abandoning their mother tongue and only speaking Ukrainian, Sergeieva and others have told Insider.

"The hatred that the population of Ukraine feels now towards anything that is Russian it is impossible to describe," said Olga, who blames Putin for "destroying our lives completely."

"But still I can't hate Russia because It's my homeland, and I am of two halves," she said. "Ukrainian and Russian, I can not split them."

Her daughter, too, will continue to use both languages at home — though in official contexts she tends to use Ukrainian.

"Russian is what we use in my family," she said. "So much we lost, I cannot lose my language now as well."