'Ukrainian Lessons' Maps Ukrainian Art Through Greek Myth
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- "Ukrainian Lessons" by Charlotte Higgins, the Guardian's chief culture writer and a classicist, explores art in wartime Ukraine through the author's visits to Kharkiv and frontline Donbas regions.
- The book profiles artist Marharyta Polovinko, a drone operator killed in action in 2025 who made macabre pencil drawings using her own blood as a medium, including one depicting dogs eating a dead Russian soldier.
- Yaroslav Pilunskiy, a cinematographer from the Kyiv-based film collective Babylon'13, was transformed from editing a film in Rome pre-invasion into a drone soldier within 19 months.
- Higgins draws parallels between Greek mythology — Homer, Aeschylus, Ovid's metamorphoses — and present-day Ukrainians, citing Anna Zvyagintseva's seed-impregnated bodysuit "Sustainable Costume for an Invader."
- The book documents the backlash against Russian culture in Ukraine, with Sasha Dovzhyk writing: "Russian is my mother tongue and liberation means ripping it out of my throat."
- Higgins recounts wartime losses among cultural figures she profiles: a conductor shot dead for refusing to perform in an occupation concert, a building where 50 people were killed, and one writer Higgins grew close to killed in a Russian missile attack.
Why it matters: Higgins frames Ukrainian artists' work as the war's primary historical memory, explicitly contrasting their output against "meme makers and clip aggregators." The book preserves creative voices — including artists killed in action — at a moment when Russia's missiles make every Ukrainian city a frontline and traditional cultural record-keeping is disrupted.
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