Ukraine: A story to share

24 February 2024: Today marks two years since the Russian Federation’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, causing unfathomable destruction, loss, and grief. In this essay, Ukrainian writer and former president of PEN Ukraine Andrey Kurkov contemplates the impact of the invasion on his life and work. PEN International continues to utterly condemn the war and calls for all perpetrators of war crimes and human rights violations to be held to account.

Andrey Kurkov’s piece was originally published in June 2023, as part of PEN International’s partnership with the West End production of Martin McDonagh’s play The Pillowman.

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When the new Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February last year, the characters in the novel I was writing at the time fled from me. In my literary process, I was left alone and stood, as if with my hands tied, between my desk and the window. At first, I listened to the explosions of Russian missiles, then I saw the horror in the eyes of passers-by on the street and, checking the Internet for news, I saw that all the roads leading West were clogged with hundreds of thousands of cars full of Ukrainians escaping the war.

I had no idea then what awaited me and my family - what awaited Ukraine. I did not yet realize that the characters in my unfinished novel would be the first refugees from my head, from our apartment, from our family world. I could not imagine that they would be afraid, but they have not returned to me, even after fifteen months of this new invasion. Since February 24, 2022, that novel has become frozen at page 61.

Once left without the heroes of my book, I also became a refugee. Not immediately, but gradually. On the second day of the war, my wife and I got into our car, took a friend and her son, and drove to our country house - located an hour's drive to the West. We had just had time to unpack when an old friend of mine called and having asked where we were, he shouted: “Get out of there immediately! Russian tanks are coming your way!”.  We got back into the car and drove on again.

During this trip, I realized that now I was a character in a story about war and about fleeing from war. Foreign journalists who kept calling me while I was driving helped me to understand my new status.

Thus, I began to talk about our sad adventures, about how we got stuck at night in the wintery Carpathian Mountains - creeping along in a 70-kilometer-long traffic jam - how the gas stations were empty, and how we had to find a place to stay. Then I began to write it all down and somehow became the unheroic hero of my own stories.

For 15 months I have been talking about myself and Ukraine, about other Ukrainians who are fighting or fleeing the war, and about my friends who refused to leave Kyiv even when the threat of Russian occupation was terribly real.

Some stories remain forever with those who tell them and with those who listen to them. One of them is Volodymyr Vakulenko’s story. The author of children's books - a single father who cared for his son who has a learning disability. Volodymyr decided not to leave his home near the city of Izyum. When the Russians captured his village, he was taken away for interrogation, but later released. When he returned home, he took his handwritten diary, put it in a plastic bag, and buried it in the garden under the cherry tree. A few days later, on the 23 of March 2022, the Russian military came back for him.

Nobody saw Volodymyr alive again. His body was only identified in November 2023. Two bullets from a Makarov pistol were pulled out of the body. In December, he was buried, but by then the writer Victoria Amelina had visited his already liberated village.  Volodymyr's parents showed her where the murdered writer had buried his diaries. She dug them up. In these diaries, Volodymyr Vakulenko foresaw his death at the hands of the Russian occupiers. Now his books have been republished and, as a writer, Volodymyr Vakulenko lives on. He talks to his readers from the pages of his books. And now as I tell you about him, I too have the feeling that he is alive and somewhere not far away.

I have forgotten the heroes of my unfinished novel. I do not know when they will return to me so that I can finish their story. Will it happen only after the end of the war? I am somehow used to their absence. Their stories can wait. There are more urgent stories to be told. And some of them are told by me.

Andrey Kurkov