Published by Newsweek Insights
© Newsweek Limited 2014
Newsweek Europe Editor-in-Chief
Richard Addis
Newsweek Insights Publisher
Sheila Bounford
Newsweek Insights Development Editor
Cathy Galvin
Cover design by The Curved House
& Jess Landon
Cover image iStock
This book was produced using Pressbooks.com
ISBN 978-1-910460-30-6 (kindle)
ISBN 978-1-910460-31-3 (ePub)
ISBN 978-1-910460-32-0 (print)
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Contents
Six months that changed the world
1. The things they left behind
2. What a revolution looks like
3. Will you lead me across the Maidan?
Donetsk: For God and Motherland
13. And the winner gets a Porsche
18. Let’s do the Time Warp again
21. Edinburgh: Donetsk is with you
Moscow Through the Looking Glass
25. Nothing is true and everything is possible
27. Midnight Facebook conversation
2
Harry Potter
The kid with the Kalashnikov isn’t happy.
The kid with the Kalashnikov isn’t happy. He scowls at us from under a rain cape, water dripping off the peak of his army cap. He flourishes my passport.
“Britain.” he says. “You are from Britain.”
I can only agree. I try a tentative smile.
We are standing at a rebel roadblock on the main Donetsk to Zaporozhiye highway which does not appear to be under any kind of adult supervision. The skinny soldier with my documents stands alone under a lashing September rainstorm. His even younger comrades huddle under a nearby tarpaulin draped over a pile of sandbags, eyeing us idly. I have seen this dangerously unpredictable stage of adolescent boredom before, in various war-torn places far from here.
He is a scrawny farm boy, no more than twenty. He has one of those broad, round South Russian faces, too toothy to be handsome. But it is the kind of open face which should have a smile on it. Instead, his mouth is soured into an ugly pout. He leans into the car with a weary, murderous langour.
“Tell your Daniel Radcliffe,” says the young rebel. “Tell him that I used to love Harry Potter. But then I read that he was a drug addict. Tell him I’m very disappointed.”
The kid shoots me a look of pure anger, which makes what he’s just said suddenly sad, rather than funny.
“I’m sorry to hear that. But I don’t think its true.”
The