Sergii Rudenko
| Bitva za Kyiv | Battle for Kyiv Non-fiction. Fabula. Ukraine 2023. 208 pages |
In February 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine: the taking of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, a declared main goal of the “special operation”. Both the seat of government and the base of President Zelenskyy, Putin‘s number one enemy, are in Kyiv. Whoever controls Kyiv controls Ukraine. The unexpectedly successful defense of the capital and the expulsion of the Russian occupiers from the surrounding settlements in the greater Kyiv area was a crucial turning point in the course of the war. The mayor of the capital, Vitaly Klitschko, made a significant contribution to this turnaround. Like Zelenskyy, Klitschko could have left the city and taken refuge in order to perform his duties from afar and in safety. Like Zelenskyy, Vitaly Klitschko stayed. His younger brother Wladimir Klitschko has demonstratively supported him and joined the voluntary vigilante group in Kyiv. The two world-famous boxers, who could have made themselves comfortable anywhere in the world after their careers, put themselves at the service of the fight for freedom regardless of the risk to their own lives and thus also personally became symbolic figures for the determination of Ukrainian citizens to defend their country.
Kyiv stands for Ukraine. This incredible spirit of resistance, which neither Putin‘s generals nor the western world had counted on, made it clear that the war in Ukraine and the struggle for Kyiv is also a struggle for freedom and self-determination in Europe. Only with the liberation of the villages around Kyiv and the gruesome discoveries of Bucha and Irpin would the Western world finally realize that this is also a struggle to defend human dignity.
Chapter by chapter, battle round by round, the author Sergii Rudenko recounts the decisive moments in the defense of Kyiv and the surrounding area. Rudenko himself was in Kyiv when the war broke out, and he witnessed the first rocket hits in the Ukrainian capital. By following the individual fates of 12 people, many of whom he knew personally before the war, he illustrates how brutally this war changes lives. In brief flashbacks, Rudenko shows these people in their earlier life with all their plans and hopes, and then their fate during the struggle for Kyiv. Its hot first phase is described here from a wide variety of perspectives, and tragically for many of these people, the voices that appear in the book have since been silenced by the war.
Of course also the Klitschko brothers, whom the author met for the first time thirty years ago, are among these witnesses in the book. And it turns out that the first round of the Klitschkos‘ personal struggle against Putin took place well before 2022.
Political analyst Viktor Bobyrenko, who predicted already in 2015 that Zelenskyi would become the next president, has now predicted in an interview that the next president will be Vitaly Klitschko. The next elections are in 2024.
