Amo a Rusia

This book is Elena Kostyuchenko's tireless attempt to document her country's experience through the eyes of those it systematically and brutally eliminates: village girls recruited for sex work, queer people in the provinces, patients and doctors at a Ukrainian maternity ward, and reporters like herself. It is a singular portrait of Russia as it is, not as we imagine it, and also of a young woman who refuses to be silenced. In March 2022, as a correspondent for Novaya Gazeta, Kostyuchenko crossed the border into Ukraine to cover the war. Her mission was to ensure that Russians witnessed the horrors Putin was committing in their name. She wrote her articles knowing that if she returned home, she would likely be prosecuted and sentenced to up to fifteen years in prison. However, driven by the conviction that the greatest expression of love and patriotism is criticism, she continues to write. I Love Russia combines reportage from the last fifteen years with personal essays, creating a kaleidoscopic narrative that, according to Kostyuchenko, could be the last work about his homeland he publishes for a long time, perhaps forever. It exposes the inner workings of an entire nation sinking into fascism and, inevitably, war. He writes because the threat from Putin's Russia extends far beyond Russia itself, beyond Crimea, and beyond Ukraine.