Windmills and Don Quixotes. Ukrainska Pravda 25

How did the great war begin — the one nobody believed would happen? How did Ukraine lose and regain Snake Island, while the Ukrainian Neptune missile destroyed the Russian flagship cruiser Moskva? How did a military intelligence operative swim for fourteen hours in open sea? How did fishermen from Strakholissia save two thousand people from hunger and occupation? How did the ordinary grandmother Polina Raiko from Oleshky become a star of naïve art and Paraska Plytka-Horytsvit from Kryvorivnia survive the Gulag?

These are just a few of the thirty stories about a country that confronted imaginary windmills and very real dragons.

Windmills and Don Quixotes. Ukrainska Pravda 25 is a journey spanning a quarter-century — through turbulence, bitter defeats and the warmth of hope. Through revolutions and war. Through rises and falls. From helplessness and infantilized “somehow it will work out” attitudes toward self-awareness and the realization of one’s own strength.

The journey began in a one-room apartment that became the first office of Ukrainska Pravda. Five people. No money. No guarantees. In a country lost in “multi-vector politics” and rapidly sliding toward autocracy. It was then, in spring 2000, that Heorhii Gongadze chose as the symbol and logo of UP the hero from Cervantes and Picasso’s engraving — a strange knight with a spear who sees what others refuse to notice.

The book gathers only a few dozen stories out of the hundreds of thousands published by the outlet over the years. It is an attempt not to lose, within the flow of time and the kaleidoscope of news, the meanings that make us who we are.

The edition also includes an exclusive print by illustrator Serhii Maidukov, created specifically for the book.