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 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 rife in PE class to an adulthood in exile trying to find a way to fight for her country. But A 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.