§16§Ukraine is the new West Berlin of Eastern Europe. The annexation of Crimea and the Russian invasion of the Donets Basin (Donbas) forced the Ukrainian nation to change. In 2013, it was still a post-Soviet country with a divided identity. Today, it is an outpost of Europe which has been holding back the onslaught of the Russian army for several years now. The Wild West of Eastern Europe by Pavlo Kazarin is a book about how such a transformation has become possible. In 2022, the Ukrainian version of this volume was named "Book of the Year" by BBC Ukraine in the category of "Essay Writing". §13§§In 2022, BBC News Ukraine awarded the original Ukrainian edition of The Wild West of Eastern Europe (Kharkiv: Vivat, 2021) the title of "Book of the Year 2022" in the category "Essays."§ §02§§Pavlo Kazarin is a journalist who was born and raised in Crimea. He works as journalist and had to move to Kyiv after the Russian annexation of the peninsula. The book was originally published before the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the author joined the _rmed Forces of Ukraine in the early days of the war. § §02§Andreas Umland, M.Phil. (Oxford), Dr.Phil. (FU Berlin), Ph.D. (Cambridge), Research Fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs in Stockholm, Senior Expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv, and Associate Professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. §02§Dominique Hoffman translates Ukrainian fiction and nonfiction from Ukrainian and Russian.
