Illia Ponomarenko was mulling over the idea of writing a book about the war in his home country, Ukraine. He decided to ask his X (formerly Twitter) followers – 1.2 million of them – whether this was a good idea. “There were a lot of positive responses,” the 32-year-old says, with a self-effacing grin. In early 2023 he began work at his new flat in Bucha, the Kyiv satellite town now synonymous with Russian war crimes. He finished the manuscript in two and a half months. “It was brutally intense and emotionally exhausting,” he says.
This month, Bloomsbury publishes I Will Show You How It Was, Ponomarenko’s gripping account of the battle for Kyiv. It is a wonderful work of reportage, immediate and raw, as well as vivid and personal. As the former defence correspondent for the Kyiv Independent newspaper, Ponomarenko is uniquely placed to tell the story of how Russia’s swaggering imperial plan – to conquer Ukraine and to topple its pro-western government – failed. “It was a pivotal moment in European history,” he notes.
