The last time I met writer Andrey Kurkov was in Kyiv, where he was helping me understand Ukrainian politics in the week the city hosted Eurovision. It was 2017, three years after the Maidan Revolution, Putin’s annexation of Crimea and his war in Donbas. In that context, Kurkov said, Eurovision “shows that life is almost as usual”. Five years later, life in Ukraine has been upturned completely by the Russian invasion.
Kurkov is a leading Ukrainian writer who has written 19 novels, including Grey Bees, which is about the conflict in Donbas (it’s currently longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award). The night before the invasion he had friends over and cooked borscht. He joked about it being “the last borscht in Kyiv” but he didn’t believe Russia would actually invade.
“The night before the war, this last borscht, I was still thinking that nothing would happen,” he tells me over the phone. “There was a feeling of danger but there was also hope that this was just a very tense period.”
He sighs. “Maybe it was just self-hypnosis... Putin spent millions of millions of dollars bringing all these tanks and missiles from all around Russia to the Ukrainian border. He wouldn’t just say, ‘Okay, now let’s go back’.”
Why did Putin invade?
"I think it's because he got older very fast in the last years," Kurkov says. "And he spent two years in isolation, double isolation… the political isolation from the civilised world and the pandemic isolation. So I think he just got mad and he understands that he doesn't have much time left... The biggest drama of his life is the collapse of the Soviet Union, and he wants to be remembered in Russia as somebody who restored the might of the great Russian empire."
It was very surreal… there was a total silence in the morning... And then I saw there were two ladies walking their dogs in the small park in front of our windows
The morning of the invasion, Kurkov was woken by the sound of explosions but then there was silence. “It was very surreal… there was a total silence in the morning... And then I saw there were two ladies walking their dogs in the small park in front of our windows.”
That night they stayed with a friend. “She wanted to show us the underground parking that we could use as a shelter, but it was closed. And that night I drank some sloe gin that she made and I slept well. Then in the morning… I was listening to the silence. But I knew already that there were missiles shot at the [nearby] Brovary district and in Podil.” (He believes this is what he heard the morning before).
Kurkov and his wife stayed in Kyiv during the first days of war. Then he got a call from an official. “He said that it was better if I leave.”
‘Banned in Russia’
Is that because, as a long-time critic of Putin, he was in particular danger? “Probably yes,” he says. “My books were already banned twice in Russia. They’re not on sale [there] since 2014 and not published since 2008. But all known writers are definitely in danger in Ukraine, as well as journalists… I think most Ukrainian writers are on the blacklist in Russia.”
He tells me about the attempted abduction of the poet Serhiy Zhadan by police when he visited Belarus for a reading a few years ago. He was intercepted by Ukrainian diplomats before he was taken across the Russian border. Zhadan “is now organising defence in Kharkiv”, he adds.
When Kurkov left the city, what was the plan? “We just decided to go to [my] village 60 miles away from Kyiv. And on the way we picked up a friend and her son… then I got a call saying that actually it’s not a safe place.”
There were traffic jams for 40 and 50 kilometres... We had fighter jets flying low over the cars… There were explosions and shots and cannon shots
They drove for another 22 hours to get to Lviv near the Polish border.
“The road was horrible. There were traffic jams for 40 and 50 kilometres. We were in traffic jams listening to the explosions because we were slowly driving past Gostomel, Bucha, Vorzel and Irpin, where the fighting was going on... We had fighter jets flying low over the cars… There were explosions and shots and cannon shots. And on the left side of the road there were military cars, bulletproof vehicles driving in both directions.”
They have moved again since arriving in Lviv, to the home of his friend’s mother in a different town.
“We are very lucky because we have a small Soviet-style flat with everything we need. Even with internet. And I’m writing articles about the situation... I am in touch with other writers in Ukraine, and we are organising to help the writers who are either in occupied territories or in places where the fighting is going on. And also, I was trying with my son to organise the escape from Kyiv of some of our friends.”
His brother and his family left that city the morning before we speak. “I was checking their route because there is only one safe route now out of Kyiv... The [humanitarian] corridors don’t work. One of the corridors was mined by Russians. Others were announced and then they were bombed by Russians.”
Kurkov plans to stay in Ukraine. His wife is English and his two sons have UK passports, but they have also chosen to stay. His daughter lives in London.
“My older son spent yesterday helping refugees. And he is on duty all night organising food and water [for them], and tomorrow morning he decided to give English language lessons to children of refugees…. In many cases, the fathers would bring mothers and children to the foot crossings of the border and go back, leaving them there… It is upsetting.”
Underestimated Ukraine
He thinks Putin underestimated the Ukrainian people. “I can send you a video from occupied Melitopol, where the citizens are actually demonstrating from morning till late with Ukrainian flags, shouting abuse at Russian occupiers,” he says.
Ukrainians will not accept an authoritarian regime or dictator. While Putin was president in Russia, Ukraine had five presidents
“In general, the Ukrainians are very motivated to defend their country because they understand that the choice is between being again part of Great Russia with no freedom, with censorship, with punishment for not agreeing with the politics of that country, or to remain free Ukrainians… There’s a huge gap between the Russian mentality and Ukrainian mentality. Ukrainians will not accept an authoritarian regime or dictator. While Putin was president in Russia, Ukraine had five presidents.”
What would he like to see from the West and Europe? "More engagement and more help. I understand that we cannot expect Nato troops on Ukrainian soil but more ammunition and the old Soviet fighter jets that were promised by Poland… because we need to control our sky. Nato will not shut the sky. And death is now coming from the sky to Ukrainian cities."
He feels a responsibility to speak with international journalists in order to let people know what’s happening.
“In Europe everybody knows what Russia is about, but in Latin America there are thousands of bots on the internet spreading information that Ukrainians are Nazis and that it’s an anti-Semitic state... I’m trying to give as many interviews as possible in Latin America, about the real situation, about the president of Ukraine, who is a Jewish, Russian-speaking guy, who was voted in with 73 per cent of votes.”
Wasn’t Kurkov originally a critic of Volodymyr Zelenskiy? “I am a critic and I will be a critic of him but he behaves well now. He behaves like a real statesman should behave in such a situation… I didn’t expect this kind of courage from him.”
There is a lot of courage in Ukraine right now, he says. Men between the ages of 18 and 60 have been ordered to stay and fight the invaders but most, he believes, would do so anyway. Kurkov is aged over 60, so isn’t expected to fight. “But if worst comes to worst, maybe I will have to.”
For now, he has stopped work on a novel he began several weeks before the invasion in order to write explanatory articles and do interviews about the war. “It’s taking all my time. But it’s okay. It’s my duty. This is my front line.”
