How War Begins: Dispatches from the Ukrainian Invasion

Italian cartoonist Igort (The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks) compiles in this harrowing work of graphic journalism “testimonies” from “people who led regular lives” during the first 98 days of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Drawing on transcripts of phone calls from his friends in Ukraine, Igort draws vignettes depicting people desperate to leave, the bleak realities of refugee camps, and widespread destruction and cruelty. (In one scene, Russian soldiers pillage stores, then offer the food they’ve looted to townspeople as “humanitarian aid.”) Nighttime scenes, drawn in impressive shadows, capture the tense uncertainty of people seeking shelter. Interludes that flash back to the 1999 invasion of Chechnya and the 2014 outbreak of fighting in the Donbas region, as well as the 1932–1933 Ukrainian famine, provide concise and illuminating background to the current crisis. An especially powerful side-story profiles Evgeny Myazin, a Russian soldier whose suspicious death followed his request for discharge from the invasion force. The art shifts between improvisational, sketchbook-like compositions and realistic, fully backgrounded images with a somber, earth tone palette. The accounts are scattershot and disjointed in a way that conveys the messy, complicated, still-evolving reality of the situation. These dispatches make the scope of the war (“nothing epic, no glory: only misery”) both easier to grasp and that much harder to witness. (Mar.)