When the fighting started in Ukraine back in 2014 I was at my daughter's gymnastics, where the coach was Ukrainian and various students were Ukrainian and Russian. I recall an Australian mother watching the TV in horror. She was married to a Ukrainian and getting dramatic and saying that this would be WWIII, because Russia was sure to go in. Of course it didn't reach that point, but over the next weeks and months I heard from both the western and eastern Ukrainian parents and grandparents their views on the fighting. Essentially the West wanted to make stronger ties with Europe and feared returning to the time of communism. The East wanted to keep ties with Russia and as far as they were concerned the Russians were only there at the border to try and help them.

One family at the gym had daughter, mother and grandmother, who were all born in Ukraine, but the great grandparents came from Russia, so I'm guessing the east has a lot of ties to Russia because of this. Many families will be part Russian and part Ukrainian.

Although talk and news on the war died down over time, I'd occasionally get reminders from a western Ukrainian woman that it was ongoing. She was saying how she was looking at visiting, but her brother couldn't go back because he'd left before having to do his national service, so he would be drafted into that if he entered the country and sent to the front line. So while the West was relatively untouched by the fighting, it was still very much in the back of everyone's minds.

It was really quite eye opening and my first real glimpses of the fact that war is not a simple as us and them or good guys and bad guys. It also taught me that talking to people on the ground rather than listening to media was going to get me much nearer to the truth. I learnt a lot about the realities of perestroika from that grandmother too. Then from my sister's East German friend the realities for East Germans when the wall came down.

I've learnt that propaganda exists everywhere, not just in other countries!