Following on from the recent post on new arrivals about the Russo-Ukrainian war, I wanted to highlight a few recent English-language items which deal with last year’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

The Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov’s Diary of an Invasion was published last autumn. It gathers together his writings and broadcasts about the events of 2022; the publisher describes it as “a remarkable record of a brilliant writer at the forefront of a 21st-century war”. Another collection of reportage, War Diary of the Ukrainian Resistance, was released on 23rd February 2023: it is the work of staff at the Kyiv Independent online newspaper, combining articles which they have published along with personal accounts of their experiences since the start of the invasion.

The voices of ordinary Ukrainians, and how they have been dealing with the conflict, have been captured in another recent anthology, Queer Ukraine : An Anthology of LGBTQI+ Ukrainian Voices During Wartime, and by the Swedish academic Gregg Bucken-Knapp in his graphic novel Messages from Ukraine. In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, Bucken-Knapp contacted Ukrainian migration and information professionals, offering help: “He found himself filling in the visual gaps as he read their text messages–trying to imagine their immediate circumstances as they chose to stay and volunteer or fight, or sought safety elsewhere. In graphic form, Messages from Ukraine explores the varied experiences of the people who sent these messages: those who were forced to flee home and seek safety elsewhere in Ukraine or abroad, those who remained to take part in war efforts, those who were abroad at the time and witnessed the unfolding of events from afar, and those who found themselves trapped in Ukrainian cities under siege.” This last title has been published as an Open Access ebook, and can therefore be read freely around the world.

Rebecca Gower