She said that she worries her son might be drafted, but also, Inna explained, “I don’t not want our boys from poor villages to go like cannon fodder and become murderers.”

Like many Russians, she has friends in Ukraine. One of them lost his wife and 10-year-old daughter in Mariupol.

“We were brought up in Soviet times, we grew up with the phrase ‘if only there was no war,’ and now I am shocked by how many of my compatriots support this war. Whenever possible, when ordinary people write to me from Ukraine, I ask for forgiveness. We are to blame for allowing this.”

But there’s room for hope. Inna says, with a hint of excitement, that “some of my acquaintances who previously supported Putin’s policy began to realize what was happening.”