A review by robertrivasplata
The War Came To Us: Life and Death in Ukraine by Christopher Miller

dark emotional funny informative sad tense medium-paced

4.0

Firsthand accounts & personal interviews from Ukraine 2010-2023. The journalistic writing style is very readable. I prefer the firsthand approach to Luke Harding's Invasion. Not really a comprehensive history. Many of the stories take place in Eastern Ukraine. I like Miller's stories of his time in Bakhmut back when it was known as Artemivsk, before the war. The connection Miller forms with Artemivsk over the course of the book takes the reader inside the experience of watching from afar a place one knows & loves being destroyed by war. Miller's accounts of the confusion, bitterness, & disinformation of the 2014 secessions of Crimea & Donbas & ensuing war remind me of Andrey Kurkov's Grey Bees. Also similar to Grey Bees, Miller mostly portrays secessionist & pro-Russian Ukrainians as having some real reasons for mistrusting their government, but also being mostly dupes, & deluded. The depiction of the pre-2013 Donbas separatist types reminds me a little of Northern California's “State of Jefferson” people you see sometimes, which I guess illustrates the ways in which harmless fringe types can become weaponized. One of the “themes” of the early 21st century has been how the disaffected & seemingly apathetic masses of the neoliberal democracies contain different groups of people who are waiting to be activated in one way or another.