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Publishing on the third anniversary of the war in Ukraine: The gripping, heartrending story, told in her own words, of a formidable 29-year-old woman serving as a commander on the front lines of the War in Ukraine — and an intimate, hair-raising look at modern warfare . . .
Lieutenant Yulia Mykytenko, a commander in the Ukrainian army serving on the front line of battle, embodies the country's resistance to the Russian invasion. When her father self-immolated on Maidan Square, Kyiv, in an act of protest, she held a press conference to explain to journalists that he acted “in sound mind.” When she heard — via radio-phone on the front line — that her husband had been killed nearby, she had to keep fighting.
In 2023, veteran war correspondent Lara Marlowe met Mykytenko while covering the war, and found her to be “one of the most extraordinary people I have interviewed in 42 years of journalism.” So, she kept on interviewing her.
From their months of conversations, Marlowe stitched together Mykytenko’s accounts into a riveting revelation of what modern warfare is really like. Told entirely in Mykytenko's first person voice, it is a story of cluster bombs, ballistic missiles, and drones. Mykytenko, in fact, most recently has commanded a drone unit, and the scenes of launching drone attacks, and of being attacked by drones, are electrifying and harrowing. At the same time there are vestiges of WWII: trench warfare, no-man’s lands seeded with mines, even chemical weapons.
The result is an urgent story of a besieged nation, a vivid look at the changing face of warfare, and the stirring tale of an inspirational woman fighting for her country's survival.
