{"id":19604,"date":"2024-12-14T08:20:47","date_gmt":"2024-12-14T08:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/?p=19604"},"modified":"2024-12-14T08:20:47","modified_gmt":"2024-12-14T08:20:47","slug":"ukraine-war-love-a-donetsk-diary-a-belated-warning-and-a-lament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/?p=19604","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine, War, Love: A Donetsk Diary. A belated warning, and a lament"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

‘The next day, when the city and oblast councils all came down with bad cases of resolutionitis and started moving to have a referendum, join Russia, and entertain other forms of ‘independence’, my colleagues publicly called the local authorities jackals for not resisting.<\/em>‘<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the fog of war often obscures the human narrative, Olena Stiazhkina’s recently published Ukraine, War, Love: A Donetsk Diary<\/a> is both a belated warning and a lament. Why wasn\u2019t Russia stopped in 2014? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This literary chronicle, wonderfully translated by Anne O. Fisher, set against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion and occupation of Donetsk that year, is a poignant\u2014at once upsetting and darkly hilarious\u2014look at a country Stiazhinka clearly loves, albeit with occasional bouts of sarcasm, and anger. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stiazhkina, an award-winning fiction writer turned accidental war correspondent, captures the daily metamorphosis of her city with a novelist’s eye for detail and a historian’s grasp of consequence.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her diary begins on March 2, 2014, amidst the first wave of pro-Russian \u2018protests\u2019, and concludes with a grim coda on August 18, 2014, the day a convoy of Ukrainian refugees faced slaughter under Russian fire.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through her prose, we are not just spectators but participants in the surreal and often absurd theatre of war where the ordinary becomes extraordinary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The author’s style is both her strength and her shield. Her use of irony is a sharp sword against the absurdity of conflict, much like the locals who attempt to maintain some semblance of normality amidst chaos.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, her depiction of a building manager shaming occupiers into dismantling their artillery, or a child constructing Lego checkpoints, injects a dark humour that underscores the resilience of the human spirit.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, beneath this veneer of wit lies a profound despair and a fierce love for Ukraine. Stiazhkina’s personal anecdotes blend with the larger narrative of a city under siege, painting a portrait of a community where every citizen, from dog-walkers to historians, becomes part of the resistance, be it through action or through the simple act of survival.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This book serves not merely as a record but as a time capsule, capturing a period when the world’s attention might have been elsewhere, but where every Donetsk resident was acutely aware of their own mortality and the fragility of peace.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ukraine, War, Love is thus a love letter to a beleaguered city, a call to remembrance, and an elegy for a time when the last words spoken could indeed be the last. It is a stark reminder that in the cacophony of global politics, the personal stories are often the most pertinent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ukraine, War, Love: A Donetsk Diary<\/a> is published by Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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‘The next day, when the city and oblast councils all came down with bad cases of resolutionitis and started moving to have a referendum, join Russia, [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19605,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6578],"tags":[8150,6732,8154,6685,8149,6320,8152,420,8155,6934,8151,8153],"class_list":["post-19604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel-sport","tag-book-review","tag-books","tag-books-about-ukraine","tag-donetsk","tag-donetsk-peoples-republic","tag-featured","tag-olena-styazhkina","tag-ukraine","tag-ukraine-books","tag-ukraine-invasion","tag-ukraine-war-love-a-donetsk-diary","tag-ukrainian-voices"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reinvantage-dev.eonserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}