Diary of an Invasion:

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When we became refugees, we left all our books in Kyiv. Now, since my first wartime trip into Europe, I have some books again – gifts from my English publisher. I’m wondering when I will be able to take those books home and add them to my library. 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. As a young man, Andrey Kurkov travelled round the USSR – on trains, riverboats and in lorries he’d hitched a lift on – interviewing former Soviet bureaucrats. He’d read a copy of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s prohibited The Gulag Archipelago and wanted to know more about the gulag itself. One judge he met owned up to signing 3,000 death warrants for people sentenced without trial. The experience was a lesson to Kurkov about the suppression of memory and truth: members of his own family had suffered forced deportations, famine and decades in the camps, but such traumas weren’t ever discussed. For Kurkov – ethnically Russian and Russian-speaking but long based in Ukraine – truth-telling has been a mission ever since. Kurkov’s contemporaneous account begins not with the invasion but with the build-up, the daily ups and downs of a country on the brink of what might be extinction, or maybe just another round in a grinding cycle of Russian threats and detente. Often meandering, sometimes unfocused, his exposition of Ukrainian politics and culture at times seem unsure of its intended readership – domestic or foreign? – but there is always much of interest. Not least, the extent to which actor-president Volodymyr Zelenskiy was seen, before the invasion, as too soft on Putin and too easily distracted by his feud with his own predecessor, former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko. They say that people remember the bad things more often than the good. Not me. I remember well what has pleased and surprised me in my life, but what I did not like or what has hurt me has been forgotten, left at an almost inaccessible depth in the well of memory. In this we see the instinct of self-preservation, although it works in a special way. We protect our psyche from bad memories and support it with good memories. In our memory, we can idealise the past so that nostalgia soon sets in, even for times that we would not have wished upon our worst enemy."

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. The war itself is a crime, an act of aggression under international law. But within this overarching crime there are tens of thousands of other crimes, whose evidence is being uncovered and documented. According to Oleksandra Matviichuk, the human rights defender who, with her Kyiv-based organisation Centre for Civil Liberties, won the 2022 Nobel peace prize, 41,000 war crimes have been reported so far. 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. Paraphrasing Kurkov himself, at some point you start looking for internal enemies. And that's understandable. But then, Ukraine is a country of many shades of political opinion - there are some 400 registered parties - and this rampant individualism, Kurkov says, is at the heart of the nation's steadfast opposition to Russia.Yes, he was a drug addict, but he was also a real collaborator,” says Ihnatenko of the local man. “But he is walking free, and no one does anything to him. That’s it – such is justice … It is very difficult to understand this. Perhaps these are matters that are too high for us.” 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. Equally alarming, he recalls: "The Russians took Ukrainian children to summer camps and they were not returned. On Russian media, I read that a group of Ukrainian kids were taken to a Russian town and were making jokes about Putin, so the Russians started 're-educating' them." He pauses: "I wouldn't believe it if it wasn't happening." 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. The fact that the crimes of the Gulag… are not a historical trauma for Russia today proves that Russia has not yet recovered from the past — Andrey Kurkov

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. Something happened to me that I cannot convey to you,” she tells me. “I had a realisation, suddenly, that he was no longer among the living. But I tried to suppress those thoughts.” She pauses. “You know, I sometimes felt like I wanted to fall upon the road and hit my head against it, just hit it and hit it, and then I would raise my head and Volodya would be standing in front of me.” 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. The book is dedicated to the soldiers of the Ukrainian army. The writing focused on the unique ways the war affects life for Ukrainians, while highlighting Ukrainian history and cultural figures, and condemning Putin. The ‘journal entries’ range from 12/29/21 to 7/11/22, giving a look at the anticipation of the beginning of hostilities and what is clear now to be only the first several months of war; all the while Kurkov wrote hopefully of an end. I too still hope Ukrainian victory is near.

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. (…).” His voice is genial but also impassioned, never more so than when deploring Putin’s efforts to erase Ukrainian culture and history. Ukraine, he says, “will either be free, independent and European, or it will not exist at all”. That’s why the war has to be fought, with no concession of territory. And he remains quietly hopeful that it will be won. Not all Russia is a collective Putin. The unfortunate thing is that there is within Russia no collective anti-Putin.” Can war be a time for self-improvement, for self-education? Of course it can. At any age and in any situation, even in wartime, you can discover new aspects of life, new knowledge and new opportunities. You can learn to bake paskas in a damaged stove. You can get a tattoo for the first time in your life at the age of eighty. You can start learning Hungarian or Polish. You can even start learning Ukrainian if you did not know it previously."

This took me a while to complete but it was so worth it. I read my first fiction from Kurkov this year and quite enjoyed it. He is a matter of fact and strangely dispassionate writer but it doesn’t mean he is devoid of compassion or empathy. The novel was mildly satirical but also kind of sweet. A pet penguin (named after Kurkov’s real life brother) figured prominently. Having registered on TikTok to follow the account of artillery officer Tetyana Chubar, I have started worrying about her too. I am willing her to emerge victorious from each new artillery duel and I would gladly support her quest to paint the self-propelled cannon pink all over – albeit after the war, of course. I think this will not only be her biggest reward but will be the icing on the cake for all her TikTok followers."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. So, if Ukraine had fallen - as it might have, had Volodymyr Zelensky not refused America's offer to move him to safety with the inspirational words: "I need ammunition, not a ride" - would we now be talking about fighting in the Baltic?