A Small, Stubborn Town: Life, death and defiance in Ukraine – ‘The mesmerising story of how in the face of a mighty army, ordinary people can say "No."' Mail on Sunday

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Harding reported from Russia for a decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, and has spentfourmonths in Ukraine over the last year reporting on the current war. His previous books have won praise from Philippe Sands and Booker Prize-winner Damon Galgut, among others. When asked by Fabricius whether he believed that the Ukrainians would ultimately prevail and expel the Russians or whether they’re going to have to settle for a messy partition deal, Harding said that while there had been delays – particularly in western supplies – and progress had been limited, Ukrainians were still making progress and had made “significant headway” toward places like Tokmak, a Russian-occupied town in southern Ukraine. Since spring 2022, Russia has retreated from the right bank of the southern Kherson region. Earlier this month, its troops blew up the Kakhovka dam, flooding settlements and towns on either side of the Dnipro River. Ukraine has launched a counteroffensive and reclaimed villages around Zaporizhzhia. But the Russians have dug in, and are determined to defend a chunk of occupied southern territory. The war’s outcome is grimly uncertain. Although he has been reporting from the front line for the BBC since March 2022, Andrew Harding is the BBC’s Africa correspondent and has lived in Johannesburg since 2009. Africa was the subject of his two previous books - The Mayor of Mogadishu and These Are Not Gentle People - but he began his career in Moscow and Tbilisi and has covered conflicts in Chechnya, Azerbaijan, Abkhazia, and Kosovo. Ukrainians answered their nation’s call to arms following Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch a full-scale invasion on February 24th, 2022, and the citizens, both young and old, of the farming town of Voznesensk became symbolic of this fighting spirit.

Zygar remains optimistic that change is coming. He remains defiant, like the townspeople of Voznesensk. Defiant enough to write: “Russia as an empire has been consigned to the past, as a direct and irreversible consequence of the war.” A bold prediction from a brave writer. Beautiful blend Ithaka Press, the new narrative nonfiction imprint of Bonnier Books UK, has acquired A Small, Stubborn Town: Life, death and defiance in Ukraine,the third book from the Emmy-winningjournalist Andrew Harding .Considering his job, it’s almost redundant to say that much of what Miller describes is terrible and terrifying (I had to set the book aside with his description of arriving at the crash scene of the shot-down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, in which 298 people perished in 2014). One unforgettable moment after the battle of Donetsk Airport comes when Miller asked a Ukrainian soldier: “This is a war now, huh?” The author with one of the book’s heroines, Svetlana Martsynkovska. Photograph: Courtesy Andrew Harding Andrew Harding’s slim book, A Small, Stubborn Town, telling the story of a Ukrainian town’s resistance against the hulking Russian war machine across a number of days in March last year, perfectly encapsulates the phrase “punching above your weight” – and perhaps shows in microcosm why Ukraine hung on in the initial fight for longer than many thought possible.

Most of the other Ukrainian commanders that I spoke to were adamant that this was a decisive battle and that it may have saved – and probably did save — southern Ukraine. It's March 2022 and Russian tanks are roaring across the vast, snow-dusted fields of Ukraine. Their destination: Voznesensk, a town with a small bridge that could change the course of the war. But a plan is emerging, and there’s a chance it could save not just Voznesensk, but the rest of southern Ukraine.

Small, Stubborn Town

Harding’s fine book points to why Ukraine has outperformed expectations in Washington and London, continues to fight on, and may just win this 21st-century David v Goliath struggle. Its people are indomitable and unyielding, brave and determined, savvy and funny when the chips are down. Unlike their hapless Russian counterparts, they know exactly why they are fighting. The odds are terrible. But a plan is emerging, and there's a chance it could save not just Voznesensk, but the rest of southern Ukraine. Meanwhile, inside the tanks, an inner battle rages. As Russian officer Igor Rudenko prepares to invade, he has a secret. He is Ukrainian himself. The Russo-Ukrainian War & Memory Makers: The Politics of the Past in Putin’s Russia: two takes on the conflict ]

Then again, it’s still very possible that the Ukrainians will make the kind of breakthrough that they have been pushing for. We always underestimate the Ukrainians, and it’s very difficult to assess and calibrate the role of courage and determination. Because while the Russians in some places are determined, in some places are well-trained, and in some places are adapting skilfully to changing situations, they are fundamentally a top-down conscript army that is suffering enormous losses of men and materials,” Harding said. The cookie is set by CloudFlare service to store a unique ID to identify a returning users device which then is used for targeted advertising. Harding is an experienced BBC foreign correspondent and writes with such a lean style that he could almost be moving through Voznesensk with a camera crew in tow There is an encouraging note about the positive effect of the war on Ukrainians' civic identity. This story has an almost happy conclusion but it is by no means the end, as the author points out with a well-chosen quote from Chekhov.

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He accuses a Russian society “infected” with wrong-headed imperialist views of engendering sufficient myths, arrogance and hostility to enable Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine (following the initial incursions in Crimea and the Donbas in 2014). Speaking to Fabricius, Harding said he hoped A Small, Stubborn Town captured Ukrainian’s defiance “but also the complexity of identity of the people on all sides”. From 2-13 March 2022 - only a week into Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine - Russian forces tried and failed to take and hold Voznesensk, a small but strategically important town 80 kilometres northwest of Mykolaiv. In response to a question from a webinar viewer, about whether the US could still continue to support Ukraine to the degree required given the conflict in the Middle East , Harding said it was “a big worry for Ukraine”.