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Ukraine

Ukraine’s war as our war

Australian reportage on a people in arms
by •
July 2025, no. 477

A Bunker in Kyiv: The astonishing story of the people’s army defying Putin by John Lyons with Sylvie Le Clezio

ABC Books, $34.99 pb, 311 pp

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Ukraine

Ukraine’s war as our war

Australian reportage on a people in arms
by •
July 2025, no. 477

Few people in Australia will disagree with John Lyons that the war in Ukraine is ‘morally unambiguous’ and that the Ukrainian people have right on their side. A Bunker in Kyiv tells how they have mobilised en masse, volunteering to serve not only on the battlefront and in defence production but also in support roles across the economic and social spectrum. As for their enemies, Ukrainians have come to view Russians solely as ‘invaders, not people’. For Lyons, the conflict is a simple one between good and evil, and his underlying message is that both morality and self-interest dictate that the international community should step up its support for Kyiv.

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Nick Hordern

Nick Hordern is a former diplomat and journalist. He is the co-author of two histories of crime in Sydney: Sydney Noir: The Golden Years (NewSouth, 2017) and World War Noir: Sydney’s Unpatriotic War (NewSouth, 2019). He edited, and wrote the introduction to, the first English translation of Liu Yichang’s classic 1963 novel of Hong Kong, The Drunkard (Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2020). His latest book, Shanghai Demimondaine (Earnshaw Books), the biography of an Australian sex worker in China in the 1930s, was published in October 2023.

A Bunker in Kyiv: The astonishing story of the people’s army defying Putin

A Bunker in Kyiv: The astonishing story of the people’s army defying Putin

by John Lyons with Sylvie Le Clezio

ABC Books, $34.99 pb, 311 pp

Buy this book

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

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Comment (1)

  • I would hope that one day an Australian journalist or writer delves more deeply and widely into the Russia–Ukraine conflict and sees that there is much about its origins that does not receive much (or any) attention in the West. The Ukrainian people deserve all our support but we do not have to join in on the hatred of Russia in the process. That John Lyon, as the reviewer states, views the conflict as one of ‘good vs evil’, with Russia as the evil, is unfortunate. There are numerous scholarly and journalistic articles and books, as well as podcasts, that take a different view of aspects of this conflict which I would urge those who are interested to read, such as the following:

    Who Caused the Ukraine War? by John Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago

    https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/who-caused-the-ukraine-war

    The Maidan Massacre in Ukraine by Ivan Katchanovski (Palgrave Macmillan, Open Access, 2024), a Ukrainian and Canadian political scientist

    https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4943693

    Flight MH17, Ukraine and the new Cold War: Prism of disaster by Kees van der Pijl (Manchester University Press, 2018), political scientist

    as well as commentary by many; for example, Jeffrey Sachs, The Grayzone (Max Blumenthal, Aaron Maté, Kit Klarenberg, and others), Dan Kovalik, Tarik Cyril Amar, Greg Stoker (Mint Press News), and Brian Berletic.
    Posted by Sue Bond
    10 July 2025

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