Tolstoy descendant hosts Ukrainians in Switzerland

Under the intense gaze of Russian literary giant Leo Tolstoy, his great-granddaughter listens with concern as Anastasia Sheludko describes the horrors she experienced before fleeing Ukraine.

The invasion of Ukraine by her ancestral homeland Russia nearly six weeks ago had come as a massive shock, Marta Albertini told AFP, adding that she immediately realized she needed to help refugees.

"It was instinctive," said the 84-year-old, who is lending Sheludko and her mother an apartment in the small village of Lens, near the plush Swiss Alps ski resort of Crans-Montana.

Before they arrived, Albertini removed most of the family pictures that covered the wooden walls of the apartment, but a large painting of her great-grandfather hangs in the living room.

The author of celebrated novels "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" would have viewed the conflict raging in Ukraine with "horror," she said.

Albertini, who last year published a book about three generations of Tolstoy women -- her great-grandmother, who gave the author 13 children, her grandmother and her mother -- pointed out that he was a renowned pacifist.

Tolstoy, who experienced the Crimean War and the siege of Sevastopol in the 1850s, would likely have been "completely devastated" by what is happening, she said.

Albertini, who grew up in Italy and France before making Switzerland her permanent home a few years ago, says she is among many Tolstoy descendants who signed a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin saying the family opposed the war.

"We are against the horrors that are being perpetrated now, the invasion of an innocent country," she said, acknowledging that Putin had quite possibly looked at all the signatures "and thrown them in the trash."

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