‘I want to hug an actual, living person’: How Meduza’s Russian readers are coping with wartime loneliness

In August, Meduza published a piece on how the war in Ukraine has caused an epidemic of loneliness in Russia. The people we spoke to described how the invasion destroyed their ties with relatives and friends and how everyday contact with the people around them disappeared from their lives. In that article, we asked Meduza’s Russian readers to share their own stories of loneliness and isolation, as well as how they cope with it. We are publishing some of the responses.