A Small Stubborn Town

 

A Small, Stubborn Town / Andrew Harding 
London: Ithaka Press, c2023.
140 p.

I read this one a while back, and have been hesitating to review it. While I thought it was interesting and certainly topical, it also felt a bit lacking in context, being written by a British journalist, and being fairly short. It feels more like it should/could have been a long article rather than a book -- there was room here to add a bit more, to flesh out the story a bit. 

However. I still found it an interesting read, with a lot to say about the town of Voznesensk in southern Ukraine. As the Russians invaded in 2022, their route came through the town - where they were expecting to roll through with no trouble. But the locals didn't think that was a plan they were going to get behind. So they did what they could to stop or slow down the movement through their town. 

There were pensioners, young men, lawyers -- ordinary people -- who stepped up to defend their town and by extension, their region. There were men who had volunteered for the Territorial Defense, but never expected to actually have to defend anything. 

It's written from the viewpoints of many of the residents, but primarily a grandmother, Svetlana, whose lazy husband and son have joined in on the defense as well. She is Russian who had come to Ukraine as a child, and can't quite believe what is happening. But she was now clear on who was "her side" -- the locals. 

It's a fast-moving, tightly written story, and as I mentioned, fairly short. It certainly keeps the reader's attention throughout, and touches on the personal stories and relationships between Russia and Ukraine. I found it a little too sympathetic to the Russian forces in some ways, but after three years of evidence I hope that readers can draw their own conclusions about invaders.

Anyhow, I did like it overall, and thought that the defense of the bridge in Voznesensk was a gripping story. Another angle on what happened in the first few weeks of the invasion.