One might hardly surprise anyone by writing a book about Russia’s war in eastern Ukraine – there are many of those at bookshelves in Kyiv. But former Ukrainian soldier Dmytro Yakornov succeeded. People raise eyebrows when they hear about his book.
The reason is, Yakornov’s book is a collection of funny stories about a tragic war.
“Nobody understands why I would be making jokes on such a topic,” he says. “I don’t know how the publisher had the courage to publish a book like this.”
When Yakornov, 36, joined the Ukrainian army in 2015 to defend his country against Russian-separatist forces in Donbas, he started writing a diary about his everyday life as a soldier. He joined Facebook to post his notes online.
At first, his relatives and friends were his only readers, but soon more and more people started following Yakornov. Reporters were reaching out to him for the interviews, and soon he got an offer from a publishing house to make his online journal into a book.
“I was shocked,” he says. “Who is the luckiest man in the world now? Leonardo DiCaprio? Then I’m a Ukrainian DiCaprio.”
Getting into army: not so easy
Yakornov sits in a Kyiv café, holding a cup of tea. A copy of his book “To ATO” (“That ATO” in Russian, where ATO stands for anti-terrorist operation, Ukraine’s government official name for the conflict in the country’s east) lies on the table in front of him, next to a half-eaten chocolate cake.
When asked how he became a soldier, Yakornov quickly grabs his dessert spoon.
“This is such a serious topic that I need to eat my chocolate cake first. I am sorry,” he goes on with his mouth full of chocolate, “the cakes are not that easy to have in the army.”
He has been back in Kyiv for about five months now, but he still can’t get enough of the normal life away from the war.
“Back to your question on why I decided to go to the army. The official version is because I’m tall and it’s easy to hide behind my back,” Yakornov says, smiling.
Prior to joining the military, Yakornov spent 15 years working in advertisement. When Russia annexed Crimea and unleashed its war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, Yakornov left his job to join army.
He says his wife disapproved the impulse, mostly because of their two underage daughters. Nevertheless, he went to a local military commissariat but got denied because of the spine problems.
Yakornov then became one of Ukraine’s many volunteers who have been helping to raise donations and delivering supplies to the army. A year later, draft officers became less picky and Yakornov knocked on their doors again. This time, he succeeded in becoming a soldier.
After spending three months in the training camp, Yakornov was sent to guard a “secret military object” in Donetsk Oblast, not far from the front line. He spent there six months before returning to Kyiv.
Writing duty
His early stories were descriptive and quite serious, as “everything caused sacred awe at first.”
“But then I started noticing the idiocy of what was happening there, and I couldn’t write calmly about it anymore,” Yakornov says.
He described everything candidly but shortened all the names of his fellow soldiers to just one letter. He referred to every officer as “the boss.”
“The bosses would read a new story and tell me I needed to cut that and that,” Yakornov says. “They said, ‘Look, you wrote here about me, what if someone comes to me and I have problems.’ And I always asked: How do you know I was talking about you?”
If some officer “behaved like a pig, he was described as a pig,” Yakornov says.
“Once our boss came to us during his day off, paraded us and started telling us that he found some (woman), and she would cost him Hr 200, but he had only Hr 50, so we needed to chip in,” Yakornov recalls. “He was so drunk that he needed a translator to turn his moo into actual words.”
Yakornov said they took the officer outside, sit him on a bench, and explained softly that he was crossing the line.
At one point, Yakornov says, writing up the everyday notes became his duty.
“With these shootings and (bad) news, everyone’s spirit was down. And instead of fighting with each other or drinking, my fellow soldiers got used to reading my stories every night,” he says. “If I was tired and didn’t write down something funny that happened that day, they said they couldn’t go to sleep without reading a story.”
Anton Olovy, Yakornov’s fellow soldier, who is still at war, told the Kyiv Post his favorite stories were the ones that he was in.
“Sometimes we gathered, the entire unit, read his (new post) and laughed,” Olovy said.
Yakornov has never dreamt of becoming a writer. However, now he doesn’t want to stop at just one published book. He says he has enough material for at least two more – one also about army, and another one about his working days in the advertisement.
The army book will be less of a diary, he says, and will consist of longer novels. And the advertisement book will be “totally positive.”
“People are tired. I think they need more funny stories,” Yakornov says.
There is no intention to translate Yakornov’s book in English yet. The book in Russian can be found in Kyiv bookstores or online for Hr 119.
