Jen Stout has been reporting from Eastern Europe since the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
It takes a few hours to drive from the relative bustle of Kharkiv to the eastern front. It’s remarkable how well the road has been patched up: this territory was taken back by Ukraine in last September’s counteroffensive but over the winter the craters have been filled and temporary bridges built. Burned-out tanks, though, still appear at the side of the road, alongside the blackened shells of overturned cars.
In the second week of May, a man climbed up a ladder and unscrewed a street sign on Moskovsky Prospekt, the longest street in Kharkiv. To cheers and whoops, his co-conspirator dumped the faded blue sign in a bin, and they pasted a replacement onto the chipboard covering a shattered window. The new sign read ‘G. Skovoroda Prospekt’ – the museum dedicated to the Ukrainian...
As refugees began to flee Ukraine on 24 February, reporters headed for the major crossings into Poland and Hungary – Záhony, Barabás, Medyka – and for Siret in northern Romania. I had been on a fellowship programme in Moscow, which advised us to leave the country, so I headed for Isaccea, a small Romanian town on the Danube, close to the Black Sea. Few other...
Read anywhere with the London Review of Books app, available now from the App Store for Apple devices, Google Play for Android devices and Amazon for your Kindle Fire.
For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions.