BITEBACK TO PUBLISH POWERFUL ACCOUNT OF THE HUMAN IMPACT OF THE WAR IN UKRAINE
When Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, Kateryna hung up her dresses, Oksana and Stanislav put down their lawyers’ briefs, and Oksen slammed shut his philosophy textbooks. Alongside thousands of their fellow citizens, they strapped on armour, picked up weapons and chose to risk their lives for the freedom and independence of their homeland. Many would never return. Journalist Tom Mutch woke up in Kyiv on 24 February to a world changed for ever. Making a fateful choice to stay and cover the invasion, he witnessed the forging of an ‘iron generation’ of young Ukrainians.
In this book, the first in English to cover all three years of the full-scale invasion, he recounts events everywhere from the frontlines of the Battle of Bakhmut to the Metro Station bomb shelters of besieged Kharkiv, to the halls of power in Kyiv, including meeting Ukraine’s battle-hardened President Volodymyr Zelensky. Despite being put on a Russian sanctions list and being banned from the country, he sneaked inside Kursk Oblast with Ukrainian troops under the Kremlin’s nose. The Dogs of Mariupol recounts the war’s most infamous encounters, such as the battle of Kyiv and the siege of Mariupol, but also explores lesser-known stories, like the defence of Chernihiv or the last stand of the Territorial Defence in Kherson.
This is not a just triumphalist account of Ukraine’s fight. It painstakingly documents the immense human catastrophe wrought on Ukrainian society and the divisions between those who fought and those who fled. It also delves deeper into events to answer important historical questions: could the Russian plan to capture Kyiv have succeeded? Did Ukraine make a fatal error by committing for so long to the defence of Bakhmut? And could this war have ended sooner, without the endless sea of blood that followed?
As we mark the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion, and as talks between Trump’s United States and Putin’s Russia over a potential ceasefire continue, this devastating account reminds us of what is at stake for the people of Ukraine.
Tom Mutch is a freelance reporter who has been based in Ukraine since the outbreak of war. He writes for the Daily Beast and the New Zealand Herald and he is a regular guest on the award-winning Daily Telegraph Ukraine: The Latest podcast.
For more information, please contact Suzanne Sangster on suzanne.sangster@bitebackpublishing.com or call 07818 810173