The Ukrainian

Katia Sinchenko shares her harrowing experience of the Russian invasion of Ukraine alongside a deeply personal history of a country with a long legacy of resistance and resilience.

February 24, 2022, was supposed to be an ordinary day. Slightly tipsy and walking home from a party the night before, Katia Sinchenko watched as the sky lit up orange and a crash echoed through the dawn. Somehow, instinctively, she knew she was one of the first witnesses to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

What follows is a memoir of a woman who grew up in a country constantly forced to reform and rebuild as empires rise and fall around it. Sinchenko takes us through her youth spent learning to assemble a rifle in PE class to an adulthood in exile trying to find a way to fight for her country. But The Ukrainian is also a story about cycles of power and corruption, and how those who ultimately pay the price for these failures are everyday people. Women struggling to maintain a sense of normalcy, children coming of age in the shadow of war, and so many men lost to the frontlines.

With a confident and singular voice, Sinchenko turns her eye as a journalist and documentarian inward and examines what it means to be an ordinary individual fighting for the right to exist in a world that keeps trying to erase both you and your country. This is not a hero’s journey, but heroes are not the only ones who can imagine what freedom feels like.