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Tag: andrey kurkov

  • Maidan: one year on

    Andrey Kurkov, author of ‘Death and the Penguin’ and Vice-President of Ukrainian PEN, reports back on his country’s revolution and counter-revolution, and how despite diplomatic stalemate and all-out war, the people do not regret attempting to take their fate into their own hands

    Translated from the Russian by Amanda Love Darragh

    The first anniversary of the Maidan protests fell shortly after the declaration of the ‘second’ Minsk ceasefire, on 12 February. This ceasefire, like the previous one, was ushered in to the roar of exploding missiles. Not along the entire frontline this time, admittedly, but at certain points where the separatists had planned their advance. President Poroshenko made a brief but significant appearance on a dark, damp evening in Kiev – on Institutskaya Street, which is still closed to traffic, and which not so long ago ran with the blood of protestors killed by snipers – and then a symphony orchestra played Mozart’s Requiem. The whole country seemed to be standing still, with tears running down her face.

    A year has passed. Those who were killed during the Maidan protest became Heroes of Ukraine (posthumously). Many of those who survived went to Donbass as volunteers, to defend the country’s territorial integrity. Many are still fighting. During the course of the conflict some even decided to become professional soldiers or police officers. Just as military operations began in Eastern Ukraine the country began to implement a programme of reforms, starting with the police force. The police reforms are being spearheaded by a young Georgian woman, Eka Zguladze, who has been appointed First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs. She is the one credited with successfully tackling corruption in the Georgian police force at the beginning of Mikheil Saakashvili’s presidency. Saakashvili, now the former President of Georgia, is also here in Ukraine, tasked with overseeing reforms. But progress is slow and subtle, while the ‘eastern front’ endures continual military operations day and night, with scant regard for the ceasefire. The fighting, the bombing raids and the funerals of those killed in the conflict make it all but impossible for many Ukrainians who took part in Maidan or sympathised with protestors to look back and see things clearly: how far has Ukraine come this past year? What has been achieved?

    If you ask people during the course of a conversation what they think about Maidan now, it usually takes them a while to reply. ‘Maidan’ is history. It has been ‘pushed back’ – first by the annexation of Crimea, then by the unsuccessful attempt to incite armed uprisings against the government in Kiev throughout the south-east of the country, from Donetsk to Odessa and Pridnestrovie, and finally by the gradual deterioration of the situation in Donbass to a state of war – a war that wouldn’t be happening were it not for the tens of thousands of tons of Russian missiles and mines making their way into Ukraine, were it not for the volunteers, the mercenaries, the regular and reserve army officers, coming from all over Russia to fight in Ukraine.

    It’s impossible to predict how and when Putin’s war against Ukraine will end. Every now and then European leaders promise not to ‘abandon’ Ukraine, but they don’t want to ‘abandon’ Russia either; they are already suffering from the economic sanctions they themselves have imposed. At the same time European politicians understand that if Putin manages to destroy Ukraine – both economically and politically – he won’t stop there.

    Today, when I ask people in Kiev if they would have gone to Maidan in 2013 if they had known where it would lead, they pause before answering, but most of them say yes. ‘We had no alternative!’ they explain. ‘Yanukovych had already sold Ukraine to Putin, and that’s why he turned his back on Europe! Yanukovych used the threat of rapprochement with Europe to blackmail Putin. If Maidan hadn’t happened, then we would no longer have an independent Ukraine.’

    I have my own vivid memories of Euromaidan. Not of the tragedy it became and on account of which it ultimately succeeded, but rather of the spirit of the Ukrainian people, their desire to influence the fate of their own country and their readiness to take action.

    Now the word ‘Maidan’ has acquired new relevance – there have been calls for a third Maidan protest, with the aim of overthrowing the new government. Next there will be calls to take direct action against the war, against mobilisation, against everything that the new President and Cabinet of Ministers are doing. The new government is responding to this threat by attempting to introduce internet censorship and stricter control over the content of political talk shows on TV. But even Yanukovych was unable to subject Ukraine to the Russian model of total control over society through censorship and the judicial system. The majority of Ukrainians know perfectly well who stands to benefit most from a third Maidan; on this basis a third Maidan seems considerably less likely than a third ‘Minsk ceasefire’.

    The fact of the matter is that a third ‘Minsk ceasefire’, which will be possible only after the second ceasefire is officially acknowledged to be defunct and the country suffers several more months of bloody and devastating warfare, will say less about Ukraine than about her Western comrades-in-arms – the European Union and the United States. It will be a verdict on their indecision, on their reluctance to take more effective economic, financial and diplomatic steps to stop the Russian Federation sending arms, men and machinery to Donbass, without which military operations would never have begun.

    Andrey Kurkov’s book Ukraine Diaries, translated by Sam Taylor, is available to buy through our bookseller partner Foyles.

    Amanda Love Darragh’s translation of The Diary of Lena Mukhina is also available through Foyles.

  • Soldier No. 9

    This article is part of the English PEN Between EU and Me project, supported by the European Commission

    Translated from the Ukrainian by Amanda Love Daragh

    On 26 August, on the day when Petro Poroshenko met with Vladimir Putin in Minsk, the capital of Belarus,  Ukrainian forces captured an armoured personnel carrier and ten Russian paratroopers. The Russian government, which has been denying the presence of Russian soldiers in Ukrainian territory on a daily basis, was slow to respond but eventually came up with an explanation: they had taken a wrong turning. The paratroopers were captured 20 km from the Russian-Ukrainian border. In a televised interview the paratroopers themselves said that they had been given orders to advance 70 km into Ukraine territory, which is precisely what they were doing when they were apprehended by Ukrainian armed forces. These paratroopers are lucky, really. They are still alive.

    Other Russian paratroopers are being buried in secret – in the village of Vybuty near Pskov, in Bashkiria and in other towns and cities across the Russian Federation. No official information about these burials has been released, but Russian journalists arriving in Vybuty to find out more were met by men in civilian clothing, who attacked them and damaged their car. The journalists were told to leave the Pskov area immediately, or they would end up in one of the local marshes and their bodies would never be found.

    Russians are gradually coming to realise that it is not only local separatist rebels fighting in Donbass, but also a great many Russian citizens, including conscripts, who have been sent there by military command. The mothers of dead and missing Russian soldiers have compiled a list of 400 names and are demanding answers from the authorities regarding the whereabouts of their sons, who only joined the army in the first place because they had no choice.

    But while the Russian government is trying to find answers – or rather, choosing to remain silent – Ukrainian troops are finding more and more mass and unmarked individual graves in territory reclaimed from separatists. One of the latest burial sites was discovered by Ukrainian guardsmen in the middle of a field in the Luhansk Oblast. There were around twenty graves marked with little signs saying ‘Soldier No.7’, ‘Soldier No.9’ and so on. These signs bore no names, no dates of birth or death, because the Russian soldiers and officers lying in these graves are officially still alive and on active duty at various military bases within Russia. Nothing will be done to investigate these graves while the conflict is still ongoing, which means that those who are buried there might remain on the list of ‘missing’ residents of south-east Ukraine and Russia indefinitely. Incidentally, the list of missing Ukrainian soldiers and volunteers is also growing.

    Several days ago I went with my wife and children to our country house, in a village 90 km outside Kiev. We were filled in on the local news as soon as we arrived, and it was not good. A report had come through from the anti-terrorist operation zone that three local men had died after being drafted into the conflict zone, but only two bodies had been sent home for burial. The wife and relatives of the third dead man had simply been told that he had died during an artillery raid and his remains could not be moved.

    At the same time people there seem to somehow accept what is happening. My old friend Viktor, who used to be the local telephone engineer and lives on the street next to ours, said that he is expecting to be called up to fight any day now, so he wants to finish sorting out the heating at home. We have a cold winter ahead of us. Chances are that it will be a winter without Russian gas. Many people living in rural areas are converting their boilers to run on peat and firewood as well as gas. Viktor has already converted his boiler and is currently insulating his single-storey brick house with foam rubber. He would ideally like to brick up one of the windows before winter too, because it is particularly draughty. Viktor has two children, and his priority at the moment is to provide them and his wife with a decent environment in which to spend the winter.

    I heard from another neighbour that some villagers have already stocked up on antifreeze. Yet there is no sense of panic. Everyone is calm. People are digging up potatoes from their allotments, drying them out and storing them in their cellars. Everyone is thinking and talking about the immediate future, about winter, about the gas supply, which is bound to be cut off or at least severely restricted. Hardly anyone in the Ukrainian countryside even mentions Europe or the prospect of a European future for Ukraine. Right now the prospect of the coming winter is more tangible and significant.

    Another date has recently been occupying the attention of a large sector of the Ukrainian population: 1 September. Apart from updates on the military situation in Donbass and Russia’s latest incursions into Ukrainian territory, the subject most discussed on the radio lately has been the start of the new school year. Due to a combination of the military situation and the economic crisis, which has itself been exacerbated by the military situation, the cost of school uniforms, textbooks, exercise books and other school essentials has increased by as much as 30-50%. Salaries, however, remain the same and in some cases have even decreased. But the parents interviewed on the Ukrainian radio and television try not to complain about their predicament. It would be inappropriate to complain about personal problems when their country – Ukraine – is facing such serious problems of her own. Refugee families in towns and cities across Ukraine spent the month of August frantically filling in school paperwork, trying to secure places for their children. Seventeen new children have already joined School No.92 in Kiev. In total, over a thousand children from the Donbass region started school in Kiev on 1 September. Most are children of the regional elite, whose parents can afford the higher cost of living in the Ukrainian capital. Establishing relationships with their new classmates may present a particular challenge for Kiev’s schoolchildren, since many of the Donbass refugees hold Kiev and its inhabitants to blame for the tragedy currently unfolding in eastern Ukraine.

    The militarisation of life in any country also militarises the way people think, and this applies especially to children. The first lesson of the year in all Ukrainian schools was devoted to patriotism and the territorial integrity of the state . Which meant that the school day began on 1 September with a discussion about war, about a war that, for the immediate and foreseeable future, is going to be part of our lives, day and night.

    Ukraine Diaries by Andrey Kurkov, translated by Sam Taylor, is available to buy through our book partners Foyles.

    You can read more about the book at the Random House website.

  • World War III: a dress rehearsal

    In another exclusive dispatch from Ukraine, Andrey Kurkov describes the atmosphere of tension and surreality in Kiev and Crimea, the schizophrenia of the political situation, and the ominous absence of birds before the arrival of war 

    At five o’clock on the morning of Tuesday 4 March, I was expecting the start of World War III. Five o’clock was the time that Putin had scheduled for the storming of Ukrainian military units in Crimea. The Ukrainian troops were given a choice: the surrender of their weapons and themselves or the start of military action. I am proud that Ukraine’s soldiers and officers didn’t surrender. In fact, like the participants in EuroMaidan, they were prepared to die. But there’s always one traitor and this one was the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Navy, who had gone over to the Russian Army on the very day he was appointed. There’s no need to worry about him. He’ll get a Russian passport and pursue his career in the Russian Army. He may even become a State Duma deputy or a member of Russia’s upper house Federation Council. Russia needs people like this. Ukraine does not.A little later that same day, at around ten in the morning, there was a report that Yanukovych had died of a heart attack. The report has not been confirmed and so Russia now has two high-ranking traitors: Rear Admiral Berezovskiy and ex-President Yanukovych, who has asked Putin to conquer the Ukraine that kicked him out. For all my love of fantasy and surrealism, I feel helpless in the face of Europe’s most recent history.Meanwhile, it was foggy outside. A thick, milky fog. At seven in the morning, a man of around sixty, too lightly dressed for the weather, entered the little square on the opposite side of the road. He crumbled a bread roll on the edge of the square where there are always dozens of pigeons. This time, he sprinkled the crumbs onto empty ground. There wasn’t a single pigeon anywhere around. I was astonished, checked out the surrounding area from the window and was satisfied there were no pigeons. Just for a moment, I thought this was a very bad sign. After all, I still didn’t know that the war hadn’t started. Another ten minutes, however, and the pigeons turned up, and a normal, peaceful morning in Kiev got under way.I still can’t believe all the troubles are over. And this despite the fact that I’ve always been an optimist. I’m still trying to understand what’s been happening over the past few weeks and is still happening now. I have no questions about anything to do with EuroMaidan. The present reality of Russian-Ukrainian relations, however, is a sad conundrum. While Russian troops were smashing navigation equipment at the Ukrainian airbases they had seized and blockading Ukrainian military units, the Ukrainian government, its legitimacy not recognised by Russia, was transferring payments for gas to Gazprom almost every day. Ukrainian goods passed unimpeded through Russian customs even though, before the start of military action in Crimea, every day had brought new problems for Ukrainian exports to Russia. Perhaps the permutations of politics sometimes resemble both schizophrenia and a sophisticated mind-game at one and the same time. So far, I haven’t a clue. Although, the simplest explanation of what’s happening could be a highly rational and dispassionate policy on the part of Ukraine’s new leaders, carrying on ‘as normal’ while preparing for the worst-case scenario.Still, while the political experts write about politics and politicians, writers write about life. And it’s the little things that make up life. The other day, en route to see my Kiev publisher, who lives, like me, in the centre of Kiev, I noticed two state traffic police cars and several police officers armed with AK assault rifles at a crossroads near Kiev University. And this ‘little thing’ lifted my mood. I’ve only seen police officers in central Kiev a few times in recent days. They were patrolling the streets with People’s Self Defence representatives. No, Kiev has not descended into chaos. Life seems entirely normal and only the appearance of the occasional passerby in a flak jacket suggests that getting back to normal is still some way off.One evening recently, on March 3, I visited my publisher at home. We were eating, drinking and trying to talk but the conversation was constantly being interrupted and a deadly silence would ensue. The publisher, Petr Khazin, kept trying to put the TV on so that we could follow the news but his wife and I wouldn’t let him. The black box of the disconnected TV set psyched us out too. We already knew about the Russian troops’ ultimatum to Ukraine’s military units. We knew about the assault set for five in the morning. That must have been why all our attempts to talk about peaceful topics were doomed to failure. When I took the same route home past Kiev University, the armed police officers and their patrol cars had gone. The streets were dark, damp and quiet. I went to bed at two in the morning and woke again at six to find out whether the war had started. As it turned out, it hadn’t. I rushed to give my children the good news but they already knew. They’d been up earlier than me – to find out whether they had any future in Ukraine.

    About the author

    Andrey Kurkov, Ukrainian writer and novelist was born in St Petersburg in 1961. Having graduated from the Kiev Foreign Languages Institute, he worked for some time as a journalist, did his military service as a prison warder in Odessa, then became a film cameraman, writer of screenplays and author of critically acclaimed and popular novels, including the cult bestseller Death and the Penguin. His latest novel, The Gardener from Ochakov was published by Harvill Secker last year.

    About the translator

    Melanie Moore has been translating Russian in all its forms for more than 25 years. Her translation of The Little Man by Liza Alexandrova Zorina was published by Glas earlier this month. She also translates from French.

    Additional information

    To find out more about the situation in Ukraine, and the poetry and literature of the country, English PEN, the Dash Cafe, the British Ukrainian Society present the work of Ukrainian poet Ihor Pavlyuk. Ihor’s work paints an extraordinary and complex picture of Ukraine and we will use it as inspiration to begin a conversation about the country today. Featuring the haunting and soulful music of Olesya Zdorovetska and a panel chaired by Dash Artistic Director Josephine Burton with Journalist Annabelle Chapman, translator Steve Komanyckyj and Ihor himself, this will be a celebration of Ukrainian voices that can gives us a unique perspective on the current political situation.