Aggression Diary

On February 24, 2022, writer Andriy Kurkov wrote nothing. And in the next few days, too. An ethnic Russian who had spent his entire life in Kyiv was in the same danger as the rest of the Ukrainians. Because in his worldview, behavior, and attitude to reality, the worldview and behavior of the Ukrainian Cossacks of the 16th century prevail, when Ukraine was not yet part of the Russian Empire, and freedom for Ukrainians was more valuable than gold. The war tore the writer from his native Kyiv home and made him one of millions of internally displaced persons. He opened his laptop only in Uzhhorod to look for a premonition of war in the texts written over the past two months. And he found more than he expected. They, as well as war notes and essays, became a diary that tells about his personal vision of the war. The writer says that this is “not just a chronicle of Russian aggression in Ukraine, but a chronicle of how the war imposed by Russia – and the attempt to destroy an independent Ukraine – led to the strengthening of Ukrainian national identity. The war allowed the world to get to know Ukraine better and taught it to perceive it as one of the European states.”