Ukraine as a whole was not yet disfigured. Except in the Donbass, in the east of the country, plowed by fighting since 2014, its inhabitants went about their business. And Andrei Kurkov was taking notes. His latest book, Diary of an Invasionthus begins two months before the massive entry of Russian troops into the territory, at a time when lightness was still competing with anxiety.
On December 29, 2021, for example, cafes and restaurants in kyiv are overflowing with diners, “pizza and sushi delivery men rush through the streets”, the end-of-year celebrations are in full swing. The Ukrainian writer also notes, ironically, that “The state and its ‘fanfare’, the government, fire off new laws like so many fireworks” : on the one hand, the Ministry of Ecology details the fines in the event of damage to protected natural resources – 15 hryvnias (38 euro cents) for a common toad killed, 75 per mushroom collected illegally –; on the other hand, the Ministry of Defense subjects all women aged 18 to 60 to the military census.
Despite this last downside, the most sensitive conflict then, continues the author, concerns the “war of the presidents”which reaches its “climax”. It should therefore be noted that on the eve of Orthodox Christmas, January 6, 2022, while Volodymyr Zelensky went skiing in the Carpathians, his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, was the subject of an arrest warrant for ” high treason “, without seeming to be overly moved by it. The political confrontation between the two men worries more the power than the population, with the exception perhaps of Tolik, the neighbor of the datcha of Andreï Kurkov, in the vicinity of Kiev, who wonders.
The little story joins the big one
But that was before. On February 24, 2022, at dawn, when the first Russian missiles fell on Ukraine, the writer did not record anything. He remains planted in front of his window before fleeing the Ukrainian capital with his wife, caught, like millions of people, “in an ocean of cars”, to the west. From that day, Andrei Kurkov, 61, has not written a line of fiction. Author of numerous novelsThe Penguin, Chameleon, Ochakov’s Gardener, Vilnius, Paris, London, Gray Bees, The Ear of kyiv…), in which always interferes a part of surrealism, it attaches, from now on, to describe the sordid daily life of a “total war”.
He reopens his computer on March 3, in his dacha. But the danger is too close, the Russians have landed not far away, at Hostomel airport, and we have to leave, “twenty-two hour journey”, in traffic jams, to Lviv. Arriving at their destination, Andrei Kurkov notices an armory. “It wasn’t open yet, but a queue had formed in front of the store. Men and young people, boys and girls, lined up waiting for the opening. »
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