Kurkov Our Daily War

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-916788-69-5
Verlag: Open Borders Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 336 Seiten

Andrey Kurkov's urgent, humane and unforgettable war diaries continue in a poignant, personal account of life under siege in Ukraine - rich with humanity, dark humour, and unforgettable glimpses of resilience amidst devastation. `A vivid, moving and sometimes funny account of the reality of life during Russia's invasion´ Marc Bennetts, The Times `Uplifting and utterly defiant´ Matt Nixson, Daily Express `No one with the slightest interest in this war, or the nation on which it is being waged, should fail to read Andrey Kurkov´ Dominic Lawson, Daily Mail ____ Andrey Kurkov's war diaries continue: A profound and deeply personal chronicle of life under siege. In this second volume of his acclaimed war diaries, Ukraine's greatest living writer bears witness to a nation enduring the unendurable. From his home in Kyiv, Kurkov captures the surreal and the life-shattering: children learning algebra in metro stations turned bomb shelters, holidaymakers sunbathing on mined beaches, and farmers sowing fields shadowed by missile strikes. On its eastern borders, Ukrainian citizens are put into 'filtration camps', en route to Russia ... or to execution. To the north, Belarusian forces press refugees into service as mine detectors. This is a lived account - rich with startling vignettes, dark humour and devastating detail - of a country adapting, resisting, surviving. A child downloads movies to a smartphone to watch during nightly power cuts. An elderly Japanese man feeds the hungry in Kharkiv. A soldier carefully rehomes a swarm of bees. A winemaker uses scrap wooden shell crates to package gift sets. A Ukrainian gunner inscribes messages on shells and rockets aimed for Russia: 'For Bakhmut', he writes. The family of a journalist killed in the Donbas sells their home to open a bookshop in his memory. Our Daily War is Kurkov at his most intimate and insightful: a record of resilience, heartbreak and fierce national pride. Urgent, humane, unforgettable, this is history as it happens, and as only Kurkov can write it. _____ PRAISE FOR ANDREY KURKOV's WAR DIARIES `Clever, passionate´ Roger Boyes, The Times `Thoughtfulness nearly always prevails over anger; the pieces are flawlessly structured; the tone is devoid of self-pity´ Robin Ashenden, Spectator `Andrey Kurkov [is] one of the most articulate ambassadors to the West for the situation in his homeland´ Sam Leith, Spectator `Immediate and important. . . An insider's account of how an ordinary life became extraordinary. It is also about survival, hope and humanity´ Helen Davies, Sunday Times `Packed with surprising details about the human effects of the Russian assault ... genial but also impassioned´ Blake Morrison, Guardian `A thoughtful and humane memoir by one of Ukraine's most prominent living authors´ Simon Caterson, Sydney Morning Herald `Here are the kind of stories you don't see on the television news´ Rachel Cooke, Observer `Kurkov, an internationally-lauded novelist, is strongest when he writes on cultural matters. And this, he demonstrates convincingly, is a cultural war´ Ed O'Loughlin, Irish Times `This book makes for essential reading´ Claire Allfree, Metro

Andrey Kurkov was born near Leningrad in 1961, and graduated from Kyiv Pedagogical Academy of Foreign Languages in 1983. After working as a prison guard in Odesa and as a journalist, he self-published his writing and found renown as a novelist. His most recent novel, Grey Bees, tells the story of a lone beekeeper as he navigates the conflict in Eastern Ukraine after the Russian annexation of Crimea. His novel Death and the Penguin, his first in English translation, is an international bestseller translated into more than thirty languages, and has been in print since its publication in 2001. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, the author has issued unrivalled reports from his war-torn country in newspapers and magazines all over the world. Not only has he been a regular presence on radio and television, including BBC Radio 4's Letter from Ukraine, but he has travelled far and wide to lecture on the perilous state of his country. He has, in the process, become a crucial voice the people of Ukraine. His work of reportage, Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev, was published in 2014, followed by Diary of an Invasion in 2022.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kurkov, Andrey

Leseproben

01.08.2022

Do You Know Your Bedroom’s G.P.S. Coordinates? They do!

When, many years ago, I first read that the Internet was invented for military purposes, I did not really believe it. I was a humanities student, and I did not really understand the technological sciences. Only this can explain my naivety. Later I remembered that nuclear bombs appeared much before the first nuclear power plants.

Now that the “military Internet” is playing as crucial a role in Ukraine as the “peaceful Internet”, I no longer have any doubts about the priority of military scientific developments. Moreover, I understand that from a military point of view, everything and everyone in the world is a potential target and that everything in the world has G.P.S. coordinates that enable destructive forces to hit their chosen target with precision. The same G.P.S. coordinates that help me to find a prehistoric cave on the island of Crete can be fed into a missile launched from a Russian submarine in the Black Sea in order to destroy or, in modern Russian terms, to “de-Nazify” this cave.

It seems that at least one of the 40 rockets sent to blow up the Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv on the night of July 31 was programmed to hit the master bedroom of a private house. It was this rocket that killed the owner of the largest Ukrainian grain trading company, Nibulon, Oleksiy Vadatursky, and his wife Raisa.

The editor-in-chief of the Russia Today television channel, Margarita Simonyan, immediately commented on this murder, stating that Vadatursky was included in Russia’s sanctions list for allegedly financing “punitive detachments”. It is not clear what kind of “punitive detachments” she was talking about, but Simonyan tweeted confidently: “He can now be crossed off the list.”

I am almost sure that Vadatursky, as the fifteenth richest man in Ukraine according to Forbes magazine, was helping his country and the Ukrainian army. He must have been confident about Ukraine’s victory. Otherwise, he surely would have left Mykolaiv, subject to daily missile attacks, for somewhere safer. The Le Monde journalist Olivier Truc, who had met Vadatursky a few days before his death, reported that the millionaire was aware that he was a target.

A key figure in the Ukrainian grain export business, Vadatursky was involved in the preparation of shipping routes for the export of grain under the Turkish U.N.-brokered agreement. The first test ship, with 26,000 tons of corn under the flag of Sierra Leone, set sail from the Odesa seaport on Sunday, August 3 without his blessing.

The grain corridor from Odesa through the Bosphorus and beyond has started working and Ukraine has resumed exporting agricultural products during the full-scale war with Russia. It is hard to imagine the cost of insuring the cargo ships, but the fact that export routes have reopened is extremely valuable. Ukraine needs to earn money to support the war effort and will do so mostly in Africa and Asia. Russia can earn money to support its aggression almost anywhere, including in Europe, since it is still selling gas and oil to E.U. countries.

In Kyiv, there have been no shortages of gas yet. There were problems with petrol and salt for a few days, but they have already been resolved. The ongoing issue is the constant need for blood donors. Kyiv residents, like other Ukrainians, are already accustomed to donating blood. No-one is surprised by the queues outside the blood donor department at the Central Children’s Hospital, which since the very beginning of the war has been treating wounded servicemen, but eyebrows were raised when, recently, monks from the Kyiv-Pechersk monastery, as well as students of the theological schools and colleges of the Moscow Patriarchate, decided to donate blood for wounded Ukrainian soldiers.

Not so long ago, the leaders of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate refused to stand up to honour the memory of Ukraine’s dead soldiers. Now the monks of the same Moscow-controlled church are donating blood for the Ukrainian wounded. Perhaps they want to prove their loyalty to Kyiv, not Moscow. Or maybe they do so in memory of the monks and nuns of the Svyatogorsk monastery of the Moscow Patriarchate in Donbas, who were killed by Russian artillery shelling. Whatever has brought about this change of heart, the main thing is the result – better-stocked blood banks.

One thing that is now missing in Kyiv are notice boards outside money exchange points and banks announcing the rates on offer. Until recently, the exchange rates had changed very little since the start of the Russian invasion. These exchange rate boards were a reassuring sight around Ukrainian towns and cities. Now, after sharp falls in the value of the hryvnias, the National Bank has forbidden the public display of exchange rates. If you want to know the latest rate you must go into the bank or currency exchange office and, putting on your glasses, peer up at the table of exchange rates behind the glass of the cashier’s window. The print size used in these notices is often so small that you might need a magnifying glass to read them. Of course, if they prove friendly and do not mind answering the same question for the hundredth time, the easiest way is to ask the cashier.

Despite tragic news daily, Ukrainians have not lost their sense of humour. Jokes are probably the cheapest way to maintain optimism. The National Bank’s instruction to keep exchange rates in a state of semi-secrecy has spawned dozens, if not hundreds, of anecdotes, jokes, and cartoons. The most popular quip is that in the coming days the Ukrainian authorities will prohibit the display of prices in supermarkets. Shoppers will only know the cost of their purchases once they get to the checkout.

Ukrainians have been greeting other innovations from local or central authorities with humour – albeit sometimes very angry humour. Since last week, many cities have introduced a rule that public transport must stop running whenever an air raid siren sounds and that passengers must be directed to the nearest bomb shelter. This rule has already been introduced in Kyiv and Vinnytsia. True, this has become reality only in part. Buses and trams do stop when the siren sounds and drivers do ask passengers to get off and proceed to a safe place; however, passengers in general remain standing close to the tram or bus – to await the end of the alert and to continue their journey. In this way, moving targets have become stationary ones and easier to hit.

You can argue about the logic of some decisions, but almost all state decisions are motivated now by only two things: security issues and the country’s difficult financial situation. Owing to the lack of money for armaments, the government is discussing the introduction of a new ten per cent. tax on all imported goods. That will mean a price hike of ten per cent. on top of the inflation that Ukraine is already experiencing.

In peacetime, a tax like this might stimulate domestic production of goods, but the Ukrainian economy, as President Zelensky said the other day, is in a coma. Many factories and plants have closed, while others are in the process of moving to the relative safety of western Ukraine. For now, increased local production is a distant dream.

It has to be said that some new businesses are appearing – mainly those servicing the war effort – such as producers of clothes and reliable shoes for soldiers and manufacturers of equipment for military personnel, including body armour. These locally produced goods are purchased by volunteers and volunteer groups with money collected from citizens and foreign friends of Ukraine.

War also creates other unusual job opportunities. For example, firms have emerged that provide preparatory surveys for agricultural land that requires demining. The demining itself can only be carried out by certified sappers from private or government agencies. In Ukraine, while only three private companies have the right to clear mines, the licences of two of them are about to expire. These companies employ only between ten and fifteen sappers, while the number of farmers waiting to have their fields and orchards cleared is huge. Some farmers feel they cannot wait and so turn for help to unofficial (and therefore illegal) help. These unofficial sappers are often former military men, as well as treasure hunters who own metal detectors. The unofficial sappers charge a lot of money to do the job quickly but do not give any guarantees.

The official sappers’ charges for demining from a licensed private demining company are quite high, starting from three dollars for the inspection of one square metre of land. True, the official sapper companies will sometimes demine private agricultural areas for free. Instead of a charge, they ask the farmers to make a donation towards their petrol costs and the salaries of the sappers. Today, legal sappers in Ukraine earn about $700 per month. How much the unofficial sappers earn is not known. According to stories told by farmers, unofficial sappers ask for $1000 for the survey and demining of one hectare of field (that is, 10,000 square metres).

According to the Association of Sappers of Ukraine, at least 4,800,000 hectares of Ukrainian land are mined, not...