How good it is I have no fear of dying : Lieutenant Yulia Mykytenko's fight for Ukraine
Publication Information
Brooklyn : Melville House, 2024.
Physical Description
290 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 22 cm
Summary
The first time Lara Marlowe interviewed Lieutenant Yulia Mykytenko in Ukraine in 2023, Marlowe realized that the 28-year-old woman army officer was one of the most extraordinary people she had encountered in 42 years of journalism. Mykytenko was born in Kyiv in July 1995. She co-founded the 'female squad' of the 16th regiment of the Self-Defence Force during the 2013/14 Euromaidan protests, which overthrew the corrupt, pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych. She married Illia Serbin, a soldier, in 2015 and joined the army to serve with him in Donbas the following year. Mykytenko briefly left the army after her husband was killed in a Russian bombardment, but re-enlisted on the first day of the full-scale Russian invasion of 24 February 2022. She commands a 25-man drone unit on the frontline in Donbas. Drawing from a series of interviews with Mykytenko through the winter of 2023/24, Marlowe paints a searing portrait of life on the frontline and offers insights into Ukraine's past and possible future. How Good It Is I Have No Fear of Dying is a compelling story of a country at war and a fearless woman fighting for its survival.
Notes
"First published in 2024 by Head of Zeus, United Kingdom"--Title page verso.
Contents
- Author's note
- The Russian are coming
- Return to Bucha
- Return to Donbas
- War without end
- V. A Ukrainian childhood
- Get away from Moscow!
- The love of a soldier
- Always
- Sisters-in-arms
- My father
- The miracle of courage
- Glossary
- Acknowledgments
- Text credits.