Diary of an Invasion:

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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. 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. There are many fascinating characters who populate the story. There is Kurkov's friend Svetlana, who is not able to leave Kyiv. She sends a message to him – "I decided to say goodbye just in case. They have warned that there will be a terrible shelling of Kyiv. I'm going to stay in my flat. I'm tired of running through the basements. If anything happens, remember me with a smile." I cried when I read that. There is Tetyana Chubar, a 23-year old single mom. She is the commander of a self-propelled cannon (an armoured vehicle something like a tank) and she has four men under her command. She paints her nail yellow and blue, and she hopes to paint her combat vehicle pink one day. These are just two of the many fascinating, inspiring real-life characters who stride through the book. 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. (…).” 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.

A week goes by, and all the news is suddenly of the miles and miles of territory Ukraine has liberated in the east, and of the Russian army’s hurried departure. So I send him a message, and a couple of hours later – he was finishing off his column for a Norwegian newspaper – he calls me from somewhere in Germany. Even by his standards – Kurkov has a smile that could light Saint Sophia Cathedral – he sounds happy. “I’m very excited,” he says. The delay was not because I didn’t prioritise Vakulenko – I prioritised him above everyone and everything in that mission – but on the way, in the town of Balakliya, we discovered torture chambers,” she tells me. “You talk to one witness, and he or she tells you about another one – and it’s so crucial, and so horrific that you cannot stop. You have to document it as soon as possible.” 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. 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”. 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.A vivid, moving and sometimes funny account of the reality of life during Russia's invasion' -- Marc Bennetts, The Times As I leave Kapytolivka, past the budding apricot trees that line the lanes, I look up and see a sedge of cranes flying overhead. I want to believe they are the same birds that Vakulenko saw a year ago: the birds that brought him hope. We found our children disoriented and sad. Not far from the house they were renting, I noticed a gun shop. It was still closed, but there was a line of people in front of it. There were men, young boys and girls in the queue, waiting for opening time. Vakulenko’s friend Yulia Kalulia-Danyliuk with his portrait in the local children’s library. Photograph: Ed Ram/The Guardian

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. Harding traces the miserable fate of Volodymyr Cherednichenko, a 26-year-old electrician who was abducted, tortured and murdered by Russian troops 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.”Kurkov's diary first came out online. I'd read parts of it and found it insightful and I'd wanted to read it properly. Now I'm glad to have read it from the beginning. The diary is insightful in the way it describes the events that led up to the war. It delves into a bit of history and it is very informative to read. It is also inspiring in the way it describes how ordinary Ukrainians have continued to live their everyday life inspite of the war and show everyday acts of heroism. It also describes the kindness of strangers, people who help others in need because they've been displaced because of the war. Kurkov himself is living in a stranger's apartment after he had moved away from his home, and his landlady tells him that he can stay in the apartment however long he wants and he can use everything that is there in her home. His own kids help refugees everyday. This is how the world survives, a country runs, because of the kindness of strangers. 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. A dramatic experience makes for a dramatic perception of the future. But, 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 the love of life.

A few hours later, at 4.30am local time, Russia unleashed a barrage of missiles, air strikes and artillery rounds, and sent airborne forces and armoured columns on a smash-and-grab raid on Kyiv. In Diary of an Invasion, his own newly published account of the war so far, Kurkov wryly observes that at least Putin did not spoil his dinner party. Instead, Kurkov and his wife were woken by explosions in the small hours of the morning. I have been thinking about that Makariv bread for several days now – remembering the taste. Only now, while remembering, I sense the taste of blood on my lips, like when I was a child and someone split my lip in a fight.A lot of discussion about I.D.P., himself included, and their relocation within Ukraine or elsewhere in Europe (latter mostly being women, children and pensioners; men under 60 who don’t have proof of enrollment in a foreign university or medical statement saying unfit for war are not allowed to leave the country) Then, in the afternoon of 7 March, a line of tanks, the Russian tricolor flying from the first, lumbered into his village, rattling the windows in the cottage and churning the road into mud. At first he thought the Russians must be lost, or they’d move on, or that somehow it wasn’t real. But it was real. With what turned out to be the last breath of mobile signal, he sent a message to his ex-wife, Vitaliy’s mother, who lives outside the area and who uses a wheelchair, letting her know that they were now under occupation.

In his new book, a version of the diary he has been writing since Russia invaded his country last February, the Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov writes, among other things, of soup. It is July and on the cultural front, where fighting with Russia has also been “very active”, there is at last good news for Ukraine: Unesco has just registered the culture of Ukrainian borscht as part of its intangible heritage. Kurkov, like the rest of his countrymen and women, is thrilled. Apparently, the world disagrees with Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry, who has repeatedly tried to defend Russian borscht from the “encroachment of Ukrainian nationalists”. It would be happening over time," insists Kurkov. "We had the accession of Crimea eight years ago and now this new escalation. But he doesn't have much time left, he could speed up the plans." We started talking every day, probably from November or December last year, about whether the war would come or not," Kurkov says. "I was sure there would be an escalation - that Russia would go for the whole of The Donbas - but not an all-out war.

Summary

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. Many families also travel with other people's children, trying to make sure that all the seats in their cars are occupied. Every empty seat in a car going to the west of Ukraine is a life that was not saved." This erasure of history, memory and fact is, Kurkov says, key to the enduring power of the Kremlin, whoever may be lodged there, whether Czar, Stalin or Putin. Most Russians, he says, don’t want to know what the Kremlin did to Ukraine: they don’t even want to know what it did to Russia. 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."