The Kirsanov family was small but toxic: Sergey, his younger sister Maria, and their father. Their mother, deeply religious, died of cancer in the early 2010s — after Sergey, in his mix of arrogance and piety, refused chemotherapy and insisted on “alternative cures,” perhaps believing prayer would do the job. She died anyway.

In Moscow, Sergey appointed himself household tyrant. Maria became his target: he hit her, insulted her, even withheld food. Her later social media posts leave no doubt about the bitterness: hatred for her mother, open loathing for Sergey, and contempt for the father, remembered as a man buried in debt and incapable of providing for anyone. Even today he is said to be drowning in arrears.

The grandmother was no source of comfort. When her daughter died, she turned up not to mourn but to claim the deceased woman’s pension. Later, when the grandmother herself died, the family apartment in Crimea passed to the grandchildren. Sergey, who styled himself as a devout “monk of Athos,” quickly sold his share and burned through the money in weeks on expensive toys and luxuries.

The father, for all his failures, did manage one thing: on the eve of the full-scale war, he got Maria out of Ukraine — first to Poland, then on to Italy. For a man otherwise defined by debt and defeat, this stands as his only meaningful act.

Meanwhile, Sergey reinvented himself. His roots shift depending on the season and the audience. On Monday, he is “30% Finnish.” By Wednesday, Irish. When war broke out, he suddenly had a Zaporozhzhian Cossack grandmother. By 2024–25, he loudly discovered his Jewish identity and became fiercely pro-Israel. His family tree is not a tree at all, but a costume rack — identities tried on, discarded, and swapped out as politics demand.

Maria today lives in Rome. She studied sociology but works as a barista. Online, she veers between K-pop, anime, and alcohol. She refused to speak to us about her brother. She didn’t need to. Her scars — and her silence — tell the story of a family built on abuse, opportunism, and debts, both financial and moral.