Lieutenant Yulia Mykytenko’s Fight for Ukraine

Straight from the frontlines, a unique opportunity to hear first-hand accounts from a Ukrainian military commander, a veteran foreign correspondent, and their local producer/interpreter.

Journalist Lara Marlowe first interviewed Lieutenant Yulia Mykytenko in 2023 for The Irish Times in a piece on women in the Ukrainian military, describing her as one of the most extraordinary people she has interviewed in her 42-year career.

Through a series of in-depth interviews and translations by Nazar Yatsyshyn, the book How Good It Is I Have No Fear of Dying emerged, providing a rare, first-hand look into the lives of Ukrainian soldiers and the vital role of women in the fight against Russian aggression. It tells a powerful story of a nation at war and a fearless woman fighting for its survival.

All three join us in London for an exclusive discussion on the frontlines of the Ukraine War.

Speakers:

Lieutenant Yulia Mykytenko, born in Kyiv in July 1995, co-founded the "female squad" of the 16th regiment of the Self-Defence Force during the 2013/14 Euromaidan revolution while studying philology at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. She married soldier Illia Serbin in 2015 and joined him in the army in Donbas the following year. After Serbin's death in a Russian bombardment, she led the first class of female cadets at the Ivan Bohun Military High School in Kyiv and later worked with veterans. On February 24, 2022, she re-enlisted and now commands a 25-man reconnaissance and attack drone unit on the front line in Donbas.

Nazar Yatsyshyn, born in Lviv in 1990, earned a degree in linguistics and translation from Franko Lviv National University. He spent two years in Seoul organizing the Peace Train, a month-long journey from Berlin to Busan under the World Council of Churches. A former translator for Kraynebo (Horizon) in Lviv, he has worked as an interpreter for various media and aid organizations since Russia's full-scale invasion. In the winter of 2023/24, he participated in over 24 hours of remote interviews that formed the basis of Lara Marlowe’s book, How Good It Is I Have No Fear of Dying. He now works as an interpreter for the United Nations in Kyiv.

Lara Marlowe was born in California and studied French at UCLA and the Sorbonne and International Relations at Oxford. She began her career as an associate producer for CBS's 60 Minutes in Paris, then worked in Beirut for eight years with the Financial Times and TIME. Marlowe has reported for numerous media outlets and was a foreign correspondent for The Irish Times from 1996 to 2023, covering over a dozen wars and winning four press awards. She was named a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur in 2006. Since Russia's 2022 invasion, she has completed three reporting stints in Ukraine. How Good It Is I Have No Fear of Dying is her fifth book.