Diary of an Invasion:

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He was under the influence of this philosopher, Alexander Dugin, an advocate of the Eurasian policy (which considers Russia to be closer to Asia than Western Europe) based on anti-Western values.

However I decided to give it a chance. There were quite a few things within the historical context provided I actually didn't know. Even though I kept guard, looking out for hidden pro-russian beasts, I was compelled by the delivery. I loved the rational explanations to somewhat complex reality it has become way too easy to simplify, the labor and emotional resilience this takes is commendable. As of September 2023 the events of the book may be a bit outdated, but the context is nevertheless invaluable and can provide a very good understanding especially to westerners who might not have followed the events of the war so closely. Every war leaves a deep wound in the soul of a person. It remains a part of life even when the war itself has ended. I have the feeling that the war is now inside me. It is like knowing that you live with a tumour that cannot be removed. You cannot get away from the war. It has become a chronic, incurable disease. It can kill, or it can simply remain in the body and in the head, regularly reminding you of its presence, like a disease of the spine. On 24 February 2022, the first Russian missiles fell on Kyiv. At five in the morning, my wife and I were awakened by the sound of explosions. It was very hard to believe that the war had begun. That is, it was already clear that it had, but I did not want to believe this. You have to get used psychologically to the idea that war has begun. Because from that moment on, war determines your way of life, your way of thinking, your way of making decisions. 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."

Summary

On the eve of the February onslaught, a Ukrainian spy chief briefs Harding: “Ukraine had a ‘pretty good understanding’ of its neighbour, but Russian expertise on Ukraine, on the other hand, was ‘very weak’. Ukrainians spoke Ukrainian and Russian; Russians didn’t understand the Ukrainian language or the country’s culture. He added: ‘They consider us to be a lost province.’” Andrey Kurkov, one of Ukraine´s best known authors, kept a diary before and after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It roughly covers the first 6-7 months of 2022. Actually, it is not really a ´diary´ in the traditional sense, but rather a collection of vignettes and writings to friends of things that interested Kurkov at the time and that he wants to tell you about.

Such lofty disdain translates, on the ground, into hatred and murder. At Bucha, the Kyiv suburb briefly held by Russia before its northern offensive was routed in March, Harding traces the miserable fate of Volodymyr Cherednichenko, a 26-year-old electrician who was abducted, tortured and murdered by Russian troops. His mother and aunt, who risked their lives to search for him, last saw him under interrogation, his arm broken, covered in blood, sobbing that he knew nothing. He was found alone a few days later, shot through the ear in a filthy basement, one of at least 1,400 Ukrainians to die in the area. When I saw someone reading this at the cafe in the spring, I thought it might be a good introduction to Ukraine (a country I know little about) and the war from the Ukrainian perspective. I’m so glad I did. This is written just before and during the first 6 months of the war. Kurkov and his family become IDPs in their own country and he essentially journals that experience. He is furious and anxious and grim but also full of cautious patriotism and hope for his country. While key events we know from the news are referenced, Kurkov also covers the mundanity and minutiae of war. What people do in the in between. He also talks history and politics and culture but also about his neighbours and shops and cinema and the plight of animals. I found it really enlightening to have his perspective on Russian aggression, Putin’s motivations, European politics as it pertains to Ukraine and Ukrainian daily life (the culture of Ukrainian borscht! Easter bread! Eurovision! Life in metro stations. The people who stay.) But most interesting was Kurkov’s discussions about the status of Ukrainian literature and the attempted cultural destruction of Ukraine by Russia. 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: This war is not about the Russian language, which I have spoken and used in writing all my life. This war is about the aging Putin’s last chance to fulfil his dream of recreating the USSR or the Russian Empire. Neither one nor the other is possible without Kyiv, without Ukraine. Therefore, blood is shed, and people are dying, including Russian soldiers. (…) Putin has often stated publicly that, for him, the greatest tragedy he has experienced is the collapse of the Soviet Union. For most Ukrainians, it was not a tragedy. Rather, it was an opportunity to become a European country and to regain independence from Russia’s Empire. (…).”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.” 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.” Then the armoured personnel carrier halted outside the house. “Any talk about heroism, like stopping an APC, etc – that’s for big cities,” he wrote. “We’re a small village, where the number of patriotic people you could bring together was two, three people max. I had known this for a long time, which is why I lived my life as a hermit.”

Kurkov is best known for his 1996 novel Death and the Penguin, a book that has been translated into more than 30 languages. When the war began, he was hard at work on a new novel, but he hasn’t touched it since. At first, he was too distracted and he missed his library, left behind in Kyiv. Then he started writing his diary, the phone began ringing and he found himself too busy being a voice for Ukraine out in the world: “It’s a big responsibility. I wish there were more like me.” But there are also, he knows, things he can say that might sound hollow if they came from a non-Ukrainian. Take culture. He believes that it is never more important than in a time of war, offering as evidence for this the fact that no sooner had the conflict started than Kyiv’s metro platforms were being used as free cinemas. “People cannot live without it,” he says. “It gives meaning to a person’s life. It explains to a person who he or she is and where he or she belongs.” These anecdotal curiosities prove far more engaging than the close attention given throughout the diary to some of Kurkov’s closest friends and family. Repeat mentions of the author’s brother who lives near an aircraft factory along with lengthy descriptions of the decisions that friends and neighbors have to make attempt to provide the continuity of a story line (Will they get out? Will they stay?) without building upon themselves or progressing in ways that feel like a plot. The real story here isn’t with these characters, but with Kurkov’s own feelings towards how the war he observes is transforming the people and places he knows so well. The day before the start of the war, our children, including our daughter who had flown in from London, had gone with their friends to the beautiful city of Lviv in western Ukraine. They wanted to visit the cafes, museums, the medieval streets of the old centre. We decided to join them. The journey of 420km took 22 hours. The traffic jams varied in length, from 10 to 50 miles. 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.When Ihnatenko tells me this part of her story, she stops and says: “‘Today or tomorrow.’ I heard that phrase so many times, when I was looking for my son. ‘Today or tomorrow’ – that’s what they always said.” Something happened to me that I cannot convey to you. I had a realisation, suddenly, that he was no longer among the living Best known in Britain for his top-selling novel Death And The Penguin, though he was born in Leningrad (now St Petersburg), Kurkov is a proud Ukrainian so is well-placed to understand how Putin's war has severed the two countries' once strong cultural and emotional connections.

Kurkov's diary is beautiful, moving, inspiring, heartbreaking. It is not often that we get to read a diary in the middle of a war, in which the author of the diary gives an insider's view of things. I'm sad that this diary exists because of the war, but I'm glad that Kurkov decided to share his thoughts and insights with us and takes us deep into Ukraine in the middle of the war-torn zone and shows us how life is. We get a live account of events as history is being made. Immediate and important ... This is an insider's account of how an ordinary life became extraordinary' Helen Davies, The Times 'At first we did not understand what war was. Right after the liberation of Izium and Kapytolivka on 10 September, Amelina, determined to find out what she could about her colleague, volunteered to be part of the Truth Hounds mission headed to the area. They arrived in the region on the 20th, and four days later reached Kapytolivka. One of my favourite writers A.J.Cronin gets a mention in Kurkov's diary. But not in the way we might expect. That particular passage goes like this –Recently a strong wind of up to 70 k.p.h. has been blowing across Ukraine. A strong wind usually changes the weather and cuts off electricity simply by breaking the power cables. No electricity supply usually means a break in communication with the outside world - no Wi-Fi or T.V. and no way to charge a mobile telephone. All that remains is a candle and a book, just like two hundred years ago. As was the case then, a candle is more important than a book. And cheaper! When the electricity went off that night in hundreds of villages because of the wind, tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians burrowed into the drawers of their tables and sideboards looking for candles. Everyone's world was reduced to the space that can be illuminated by a candle. Forced romance won out over high-tech reality."