Ian Bateson

My project looks at what it means to be Ukrainian at a time when Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to insist that Ukrainians are not a separate nation, and Ukraine is still a tabula rasa for most of the world. The book focuses on reportage and stories I collected while traveling across the country over the past five years, from the front in the east to the villages my great-grandparents left in Austro-Hungarian Galicia in 1900. The aim is to fill Ukraine with the stories of real people at a time when the country is rapidly changing; both pushing ahead with a new more tolerant civic-based identity, and with nationalist groups growing in influence.