- Oleksandr Mikhed is a Ukrainian writer who became a soldier after the Russian invasion.
- Mikedo wrote a book documenting his and others' experiences during the war.
- He told Business Insider that the book is a “testament of anger, love and memory.”
“War changes everything,” writes Oleksandr Mikhed in his new book, The Language of War.
Before Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Ukrainian writer lived with his wife Olena and their dog Lisa in Hostomel, a town near the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.
But after Russian forces stormed Hostomer airport on February 24, Mikhed and Olena fled to Chernivtsi in southwestern Ukraine.
Within a week of the invasion, Mikhed, a well-known author with nine books published, had enlisted in the Ukrainian army and his former home was destroyed by the Russian offensive.
As the life he knew was falling apart, he says he felt he had to document what was happening in his country.
“If you take away my past life, if you take away everything, I'm still a writer and I'm still going to find a way to tell this story,” he told Business Insider.
He began writing down his feelings on the first morning of the invasion, and those notes eventually became “the language of war,” a testament to “anger, love and memory,” he says.
When I met him in London to discuss the book, Mikedo seemed a headstrong, determined man, shaped by a conflict already in its third year.
In this book he reveals the horror of the conflict in a series of vivid, fragmented sentences that mirror the chaos of war.
At the heart of the work is his view that this war is not Putin's war, but a war to be waged by all Russians.
“I blame them all,” Mikedo says. “I think he was a reflection of what they wanted.”
He noted that there was little opposition to Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, and public opinion against a full-scale invasion only began to shift after Putin announced a partial mobilization in September 2022.
He also pointed to the atrocities committed in Bucha and Mariupol, as well as those involved in the double-tap attack targeting rescue workers.
“We are fighting all of them. It is not Putin who is pulling the trigger in Bucha,” he said, referring to the 2022 massacre.
Mikedo's parents survived the Bucha occupation, he writes in his book.
“After weeks of waiting daily for a text message from my parents in occupied Bucha, one short word finally appeared: 'Alive,'” he wrote.
As he spoke, Mikedo's anger became clear.
He clarifies that he feels anger, not hatred, because “hatred has no purpose.”
“This is what drives me,” he says. “Anger is a powerful emotion that gives me the strength and motivation to keep going.”
But he also said the war had produced “wonderful people” and given him a sense of “great love”, citing foreign journalists documenting life in Kiev.
Mikhed also talks about how the military has united Ukrainians from all walks of life, blurring the boundaries of age, gender and politics.
“The peculiarity of the Ukrainian army is that it is a mirror of society as a whole,” he said. “There is no one whose relatives do not serve in the army.”
But he also reminds us of the brutal reality of war: “There is no one who has not lost a friend, a relative or a loved one to an invasion.”
In late February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since Russia began its invasion. In November 2023, the United Nations human rights monitor in Ukraine said that at least 10,000 Ukrainian civilians had been killed as a result of the conflict.
Russian casualties are estimated at more than 500,000.
He says the only challenge for a writer is to stay alive.
Mikhedo’s story is just one example of the resilience of the Ukrainian people against Russian invaders.
Despite a failed counterattack last summer, followed by serious shortages of ammunition and equipment, Ukrainian determination thwarted Russia's most recent advances around Kharkov, preventing Russia from achieving the main objective of its invasion.
Nevertheless, the war in Ukraine rages on, a fact that Mikhedo grimly reminds me of as he discusses his book.
“In normal literature, we talk about literary series, literary style, we experiment with words, we try to be radical, we try to be normative. But in Ukraine, you just have to be alive,” he says.
“This is probably the only challenge a writer faces.”
