During World War II, there was a slogan in the Soviet Union that said, “For the Motherland, for Stalin!” The soldiers who died did so for the U.S.S.R. and for Stalin. […] Now the Russians are dying, “For the Motherland, for Putin”. Ukrainians die only for their Motherland, for Ukraine. Ukrainians don’t have a tsar to die for. […] Ukraine is a country of free people. Ukraine has given me thirty years of life without censorship, without dictatorship, without control over what I wrote and what I said. For this, I am infinitely grateful to my country. I now understand very well that if Russia succeeds in seizing Ukraine, all the freedoms that the citizens of Ukraine are so used to will be lost, together with the independence of our state”, reflects Andrey Kurkov at some point in his “Diary of an Invasion”. Oftentimes, though, he dismisses such pessimistic thoughts by affirming Ukrainian spirit and the will of Ukrainians to fight and defend their country at all costs. I believe this book is incredibly important to read, especially for Westerners as this provides an up close and personal account of the war, from someone who is Ukrainian and has lived in Ukraine most of his life, and is well known there as an Ukrainian author. Some of his takes on the war and western responses to it were quite refreshing. Despite the destruction, morale remains good, he says. His 25-year-old daughter recently returned to Kyiv from London to join her brother, and is now looking for a job. Kurkov sees every video and every posted message, and he spends the sleepless nights of continuous bombardment of his city delivering the truth about this invasion to the world.

However, this territory is complicated, too. Like millions of Ukrainians, Kurkov, who was born near Leningrad, is a native Russian speaker and part of the fascination of his book lies in its accounts of the struggle for identity within the country, something the war has made more vexed. Ukraine has, for instance, demanded that Russian culture be boycotted. But while many younger Ukrainians are enthusiastic about this idea, older people are more conservative. The council of the Pyotr Tchaikovsky conservatory in Kyiv, the country’s national music academy, recently met to discuss whether it should be renamed after the Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko – and eventually decided against. Meanwhile, an opera-loving friend of Kurkov’s wept at the thought of not being able ever again to hear Eugene Onegin at Kyiv opera house. Russia has introduced a reign of terror on the occupied territories, to keep them under control,” she says. “Occupation is not a matter of exchanging the flag of one state for that of another. Occupation brings torture, deportation, forced adoption, denial of identity, filtration camps, mass graves.” The totality of this cruelty seems impossible to comprehend, its scale beyond the capabilities of a nation’s judicial system. The first volume of his Diary Of An Invasion begins on December 29, 2021, with "Goodbye Delta! Hello Omicron!" - if only Covid was all Ukraine had to worry about - and ends in early July, before the recent successes of Ukraine's army, to whose soldiers Kurkov has dedicated the book.

Summary

On February 24, 2022, all citizens of Ukraine found that their lifetime had been cut brutally in two, into the period “before the war” and that “during the war”. Of course, we all hope that there will be a period “after the war as well”. This review could go on and on due to my fascination with so many parts of it. Even the multiple typos I came across didn’t have enough weight this time to result in a reduction in the rating! I would suggest this book to each and everyone who is interested in Ukraine, the currently ongoing war and the people’s stories behind it. I’m really glad about having discovered the author and am looking forward to reading more of his books. To sum it all up, I will leave one last quote here: Ukraine will either be free, independent, and European, or it will not exist at all. (…) Ukrainians did not give up even when they were not free – after WW2, the partisan war against the Soviets in Ukraine continued until the early 1960s. Ukrainians will not now give up, especially after thirty years of free and independent life.”

At the same time, amid the muddy, morally ugly world of occupation, amid the terror of it, the desperation and hunger, Vakulenko would not be the first or last to have been betrayed by a neighbour – if that is indeed what happened, as his family suspects. Under occupation, outright collaboration slides into casual treachery and the working out of petty grudges. As for the precise circumstances of his killing, Truth Hounds and Ukrainian law enforcement agencies are continuing to investigate the case.Though Kurkov holds a Ukrainian passport, he was born in Russia. Writing in both Russian and Ukrainian for most of his life has opened him up to criticism from both sides. Ever on the lookout for historical parallels to explain the present, Kurkov has written in defense of writers like The Master and Margarita author Mikhail Bulgakov after members of Ukraine’s national writers’ union called for the renaming of Bulgakov’s family home, which is now a literary museum in Kyiv.

Något som mer berörs det vi kan kalla hedniska traditioner som ännu lever kvar i Ukraina. Som till exempel att vid Påsk göra fint vid graven och ta med sig mat och prata och minnas de döda vid graven. Sometimes, dropping off for an hour or two, I dream,” he wrote in the diary’s last entry. “During the first period of occupation I dreamed of numbers, old calendars, friends. I also dreamed of our lads fighting, dreamed I was hugging them, greeting them. I am scared to think of how they are. During the first days of occupation I gave up a little, then due to my half-starved state, totally. Now I’ve pulled myself together, even raking the garden and digging up potatoes to take into the house.” Volodymyr Vakulenko has two graves. When I talk to his father among the cherry trees, which are budding once more in April, he tells me that his son’s corpse was found not far from the railway lines near Izium station, on 12 May last year. He was then buried – unbeknown to his family, who would still be searching for him for months to come – in the mass graves on the edge of the town. These graves of occupation, more than 400 of them, including a single pit containing the bodies of more than 20 Ukrainian soldiers, were exhumed by the Ukrainian authorities on 16 September, a week after the liberation. Those who were there say they will not easily forget the odour of death. As if by some divine joke, in the Ukrainian National character, unlike in the Russian one, there is no fatalism. Ukrainians almost never get depressed. They are programmed for victory, for happiness, for survival in difficult circumstances, as well as for love of life.” What about the part played by Europe? President Zelenskiy’s wife has told us that inflation and rising gas bills are a small price to pay if they mean freedom for Ukraine. “The role of Europe isn’t crucial, but it’s almost crucial,” he says. He notes that France and Germany have not yet delivered the military help they promised (though pressure is now mounting on Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor). “Without Britain and America, we wouldn’t be where we are.” The last time he was in the UK, Ukrainian flags were everywhere; this time, there are far fewer around. “I hope people aren’t going to start displaying Russian flags as they worry about their bills,” he says, with a smile. The west should remember that Russian agents are good at stirring dissent favourable to their country: “Yesterday, 70,000 pro-Russia demonstrators were on the streets in Prague.”In this difficult, dramatic time, when the independence of my country Ukraine is at risk, the works of the great Scottish writer Archibald Joseph Cronin, who brilliantly combined the talents of a doctor and a writer, help me a lot. I make use of all five volumes of his work, published in Moscow in 1994 by the Sytin Foundation publishing house. It does not matter what the stories are in these books. I do not read fiction now. I use the five volumes to rest my computer on, so that my Zooms and Skypes follow the rules of television, so that the laptop's camera is located at my eye level." Surprisingly perhaps to a British audience, he is not an unalloyed supporter of Zelensky, whose leadership has won worldwide praise, drawing comparisons to Winston Churchill. Although he does believe the president has proved himself under fire. He points out that historical truth and trauma are returned to the people through works of art, literature, and cinema.

Romana Yaremyn poses in the bookshop she runs in Lviv on 20 April, among hundreds of books evacuated from her bookshop and publishing house in embattled Kharkiv. Photograph: Yuriy Dyachyshyn/AFP/Getty Images 30 March 2022 In a recent opinion piece for The Guardian, Andrey Kurkov writes about recycling. While over 3,000 Russian tanks have been destroyed since the beginning of the latest war in Ukraine, it’s the smaller scrap metal and artillery shell casings that artists have focused on painting for European auctions that have raised money for the Ukrainian military and humanitarian aid. The war offers other opportunities for recycling in the forms of historical figures, renamed places, and myths about national identity. Such are the adaptations of a culture at war, a thoroughly modern war that Kurkov examines through his own understanding of the history that led the Ukrainian people to where they are now. Diary of an Invasion by the Ukrainian writer, Andrey Kurkov, consists of personal diary entries, texts on various subjects, wartime notes and essays spanning the period of seven months, starting at the end of December 2021 with the last entry recorded in July 2022. This is a chronicle of one person’s feelings, thoughts, emotions during the time of the Russian aggression in Ukraine. This is also a portrayal of the Ukrainian society, Ukrainian culture, and Ukrainian nationhood. Despite the continuous attempts by the Russian aggressor to destroy the Ukrainian nation, Kurkov writings show the strengthening of Ukrainian national identity.From day one I stopped writing fiction. I couldn't concentrate on anything but reality. So, when I was asked to comment about events, I started speaking on radio and television then writing about what was happening." Zoom in, though, and the story of each individual crime contains pains and griefs that belong to it alone. It is unclear, as yet, precisely what impelled the occupiers to take and kill Vakulenko. But his unapologetic, unconcealed adherence to an idea of Ukraine, his shelves of Ukrainian-language books, his patriotic tattoos, his refusal to speak Russian: all of this likely made him a target for the occupiers. He really loved Ukraine. He was trying to prove to everyone here that we should build our own future as a country Kurkov’s thoughts on an extremely important question for Ukrainians, as well as many Eastern Europeans, regarding the historical memory and historical trauma are compelling and important. Kurkov explores the suppression of collective trauma and how historical injuries affect the construction of national identity. He discusses at length the case of Ukraine, Russia as well as Lithuania.