Sunday, July 3, 2022

the last book I ever read (Andrey Kurkov's Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev, excerpt fourteen)

from Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev by Andrey Kurkov:

Tuesday 18 March

Thousands of Maidanistas and members of the self-defence have already begun military training. When the radio announces this news, the sense that war is imminent is only intensified. Before, the news was merely bad, focusing on sad events. Now it is bellicose and full of enthusiasm.

In recent days, the governor of Donbas, Serhiy Taruta–a businessman and one of the country’s less rich oligarchs–announced that he had paid for a twelve-foot-wide ditch to be dug along the Russian border and for a six-foot-high earth rampart to be built. Concrete fortifications have been constructed on this rampart, intended to stop the Russian tanks. The ditch extends over the entire border that the Donetsk region shares with Russia, a distance of at least seventy miles. If I ever describe this ditch in a novel, I will be sure to fill it with water and to populate it with crocodiles capable of biting through the Russian tanks’ armour plating.



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