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Ukraine, War, Love: A Donetsk Diary
In Ukraine, War, Love , Olena Stiazhkina depicts day-to-day developments in and around her beloved hometown Donetsk during Russia’s 2014 invasion and occupation of the Ukrainian city. An award-winning fiction writer, Stiazhkina chronicles an increasingly harrowing series of events with sarcasm, anger, humor, and love.
The diary opens on March 2, 2014, as the first wave of pro-Russian protest washes over eastern Ukraine in the wake of Euromaidan, the Revolution of Dignity, and it closes on August 18, 2014, the day a convoy of civilian Ukrainian refugees is deliberately slaughtered by Russian forces. Early on, Stiazhkina is captured by pro-Russian forces while she browses for books but is freed when one of her captors turns out to be a former student. Vignettes from her personal life intermingle with current events, and she examines ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. We walk with local dogs and their owners; we meet a formidable apartment building manager who shames occupiers and dismantles their artillery from the roof of her building; we follow a family evacuated to Kyiv whose young son builds checkpoints out of Legos. Olena Stiazhkina’s Ukraine, War, A Donetsk Diary is a fierce love letter to her country, her city, and her people.
The diary opens on March 2, 2014, as the first wave of pro-Russian protest washes over eastern Ukraine in the wake of Euromaidan, the Revolution of Dignity, and it closes on August 18, 2014, the day a convoy of civilian Ukrainian refugees is deliberately slaughtered by Russian forces. Early on, Stiazhkina is captured by pro-Russian forces while she browses for books but is freed when one of her captors turns out to be a former student. Vignettes from her personal life intermingle with current events, and she examines ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. We walk with local dogs and their owners; we meet a formidable apartment building manager who shames occupiers and dismantles their artillery from the roof of her building; we follow a family evacuated to Kyiv whose young son builds checkpoints out of Legos. Olena Stiazhkina’s Ukraine, War, A Donetsk Diary is a fierce love letter to her country, her city, and her people.
296 pages, Hardcover
Published June 11, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 24, 2025
Unhappy anniversary. Now that he’s kneecapped medical research, affirmed the importance of bribery and handed over Americans’ financial data to a South African billionaire with a fondness for fascists, Donald Trump is ready to bring his legendary sagacity to European geopolitics.
The timing is perfect. Three years ago today, Russia recognized the faux Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic. Three days after that violent charade, Putin invaded Ukraine under the guise of protecting his fellow patriots.
Earlier this month, official U.S. Party Animal Pete Hegseth prematurely handed over chunks of Ukraine to Russia. But he was quickly forced to walk back those comments. The only person allowed to woo Vladimir with a bouquet of Ukrainian cities is his besotted beau, Donald Trump.
Perhaps no one understands what a ghastly farce this war is better than Ukrainian writer Olena Stiazhkina. She was a professor at Donetsk National University in 2014 when Russians, dressed up as protesters, began rioting in eastern Ukraine.
“All this was so absurd, artificial, and clichéd that, at first, it wasn’t even scary,” Stiazhkina writes. “But then ‘all this’ started taking hostages, started raping and killing. Life left the city gradually, drop by drop.”
Being a writer and a historian, she began to record what she was seeing and experiencing in her native city. “At some point, I realized I was writing the history of a slow descent into hell,” she says. “What’s it like when Russians come to ‘save Russian speakers,’ and then kill them?”
Her answer to that grotesque question is “Ukraine, War, Love: A Donetsk Diary,” which covers about six months in 2014. Most days Stiazhkina offers us eyewitness reports; often she provides wry political analysis; and frequently she’s a Ukrainian reincarnation of Kurt Vonnegut.
Her tone shifts as quickly as a mob’s mood — from defiant to fatalistic, sarcastic, stunned and silly. Anne O. Fisher’s brilliant translation not only makes those hairpin turns, but her English sentences feel laced with Slavic cool.
Despite the brutal beatings and random shootings all around, Stiazhkina never loses her sardonic sense of humor about living in the fantastical “Donetsk People’s Republic”: “The new government entity exists only in the Russian media and the minds of its creators,” she says. For Americans now falling down a similar hole of disinformation, her book serves as a road map into our own Alice-in-Wonderland future. After all, just three days ago, Trump went full Mad Hatter and accused Ukraine of starting the war.
One of the best and most harrowing moments in the diary takes place in April when Stiazhkina is arrested along with her favorite bookseller, who’s such a talkative over-sharer that it’s impossible to buy a mystery novel from her without first hearing who the killer is.
The two women are chained in a makeshift holding-tank waiting for the guards to decide if they should be executed. After an hour, the captain walks in. “It was the face of my student Vasnetsov,” Stiazhkina writes. He had not been a particularly good student, but her willingness to keep him in school had kept him out of the mines — and alive.
“‘Whoops,’ said Vasnetsov, blushing furiously. ‘There’s been a small mistake.’” He unchains the women and lets them go home, but Stiazhkina won’t back down. On the street, she warns her former pupil: “You still have an incomplete.”
Another of my favorite sections — about a mother and her drunken son — sports the tragicomic ring of an I.B. Singer story. Such perfectly crafted anecdotes lean heavily on Stiazhkina’s skill as a fiction writer: her flawless timing, her ear for suspense, her ability to catch details that quickly place us in the scene.
“There’s still a lot that’s comical,” she admits, before describing Russian propaganda designed to depict an internal uprising against defeated American soldiers — who are always Black men, by the way, “because how can you tell if some random dead white guy is American or not?”
As the bombings and killings swirl, Stiazhkina’s elderly father breaks down, haunted by childhood memories of World War II. “What are these bandits here for?” he cries. “Who asked them to come? My home... My home.”
Such moments of naked pathos are braided through this angry, witty diary. “War isn’t how it’s described in books,” Stiazhkina writes in this rare book that describes what war is like in all its vicious absurdity.
“It’s impossible to believe it’s really happening, to completely believe it, all the way down to your core. ‘It’s not happening to us. It’s not happening to me. All of this isn’t happening to me....’ As long as you’re alive, it’s impossible to believe it.” Stiazhkina is in Kyiv now — still alive and still writing. Believe it.
Excerpted from The Washington Post's free Book Club newsletter:
https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw...
The timing is perfect. Three years ago today, Russia recognized the faux Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic. Three days after that violent charade, Putin invaded Ukraine under the guise of protecting his fellow patriots.
Earlier this month, official U.S. Party Animal Pete Hegseth prematurely handed over chunks of Ukraine to Russia. But he was quickly forced to walk back those comments. The only person allowed to woo Vladimir with a bouquet of Ukrainian cities is his besotted beau, Donald Trump.
Perhaps no one understands what a ghastly farce this war is better than Ukrainian writer Olena Stiazhkina. She was a professor at Donetsk National University in 2014 when Russians, dressed up as protesters, began rioting in eastern Ukraine.
“All this was so absurd, artificial, and clichéd that, at first, it wasn’t even scary,” Stiazhkina writes. “But then ‘all this’ started taking hostages, started raping and killing. Life left the city gradually, drop by drop.”
Being a writer and a historian, she began to record what she was seeing and experiencing in her native city. “At some point, I realized I was writing the history of a slow descent into hell,” she says. “What’s it like when Russians come to ‘save Russian speakers,’ and then kill them?”
Her answer to that grotesque question is “Ukraine, War, Love: A Donetsk Diary,” which covers about six months in 2014. Most days Stiazhkina offers us eyewitness reports; often she provides wry political analysis; and frequently she’s a Ukrainian reincarnation of Kurt Vonnegut.
Her tone shifts as quickly as a mob’s mood — from defiant to fatalistic, sarcastic, stunned and silly. Anne O. Fisher’s brilliant translation not only makes those hairpin turns, but her English sentences feel laced with Slavic cool.
Despite the brutal beatings and random shootings all around, Stiazhkina never loses her sardonic sense of humor about living in the fantastical “Donetsk People’s Republic”: “The new government entity exists only in the Russian media and the minds of its creators,” she says. For Americans now falling down a similar hole of disinformation, her book serves as a road map into our own Alice-in-Wonderland future. After all, just three days ago, Trump went full Mad Hatter and accused Ukraine of starting the war.
One of the best and most harrowing moments in the diary takes place in April when Stiazhkina is arrested along with her favorite bookseller, who’s such a talkative over-sharer that it’s impossible to buy a mystery novel from her without first hearing who the killer is.
The two women are chained in a makeshift holding-tank waiting for the guards to decide if they should be executed. After an hour, the captain walks in. “It was the face of my student Vasnetsov,” Stiazhkina writes. He had not been a particularly good student, but her willingness to keep him in school had kept him out of the mines — and alive.
“‘Whoops,’ said Vasnetsov, blushing furiously. ‘There’s been a small mistake.’” He unchains the women and lets them go home, but Stiazhkina won’t back down. On the street, she warns her former pupil: “You still have an incomplete.”
Another of my favorite sections — about a mother and her drunken son — sports the tragicomic ring of an I.B. Singer story. Such perfectly crafted anecdotes lean heavily on Stiazhkina’s skill as a fiction writer: her flawless timing, her ear for suspense, her ability to catch details that quickly place us in the scene.
“There’s still a lot that’s comical,” she admits, before describing Russian propaganda designed to depict an internal uprising against defeated American soldiers — who are always Black men, by the way, “because how can you tell if some random dead white guy is American or not?”
As the bombings and killings swirl, Stiazhkina’s elderly father breaks down, haunted by childhood memories of World War II. “What are these bandits here for?” he cries. “Who asked them to come? My home... My home.”
Such moments of naked pathos are braided through this angry, witty diary. “War isn’t how it’s described in books,” Stiazhkina writes in this rare book that describes what war is like in all its vicious absurdity.
“It’s impossible to believe it’s really happening, to completely believe it, all the way down to your core. ‘It’s not happening to us. It’s not happening to me. All of this isn’t happening to me....’ As long as you’re alive, it’s impossible to believe it.” Stiazhkina is in Kyiv now — still alive and still writing. Believe it.
Excerpted from The Washington Post's free Book Club newsletter:
https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw...
October 26, 2024
3.75 stars
August 30, 2026
After a year on the shelf, I know I'm not going to finish this wonderful book. It's time to donate it to my favorite library.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews