War correspondent Dmitry Seleznyov describes Donetsk, where the bravery of the residents has become part of everyday life—just as the sounds of sirens are. This is a chronicle of a city where tragedy is tightly intertwined with ordinary life. The book by Seleznyov, working on the WarGonzo project and awarded the Vladlen Tatarsky Prize, is dedicated to wartime Donetsk, where he arrived in February 2022 before the start of the special military operation and lived there for more than two and a half years. From Donetsk he traveled to Mariupol and Bakhmut, where street fighting took place, and to Melitopol and Luhansk, to Kherson and Lyman—cities that later had to be left to the Russian army.
The author has been to Soledar with the Wagner group, hid in the basement of the Rosgvardiya in Popasna, and sheltered from cassette strikes under an armored vehicle, hearing the sounds of death. But the central character of the book is Donetsk itself, with many memorable stories where tragedy and courage go hand in hand with everyday life.
Attention! The audio recording contains profanity.