Dimko Zhluktenko describes himself as an average guy, but in reality, he is anything but. Before the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he worked in the tech industry, and he and his girlfriend, Ira, were fortunate adequate to have the time and means to travel the world. erstwhile Russia invaded in February 2022, Zhluktenko, like many another Ukrainians, found himself at a individual crossroads. He could proceed working his well-paying occupation in tech, or he could dedicate himself full to helping the Ukrainian war effort. In a brave and selfless move, Zhluktenko chose the second option. He rapidly set to work organizing donation items and funds for the Ukrainian military, and, with the aid of Ira and a small inspiration from their dog, Dzyga, Zhluktenko began bringing much needed tech items, like drones, to the Ukrainian military. In his book Ordinary Guy at War (Kovyla Publishing, 2025), Dimko Zhluktenko offers a fresh kind of war narrative, 1 rooted not only in Ukrainian culture and identity – and the ongoing conflict to preserve them – but besides in sheer humanity and selflessness.
While most emerging Russo-Ukrainian war narratives share stories from the battlefield and account for the psychological, emotional and even physical toll paid by Ukrainian soldiers each and all day, Zhluktenko’s book offers its audience a glance behind the fundraising scene. After all, fundraising via his organization “Dzyga’s Paw” is how Zhluktenko first contributed to the war effort until he yet enlisted in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Zhluktenko goes to large lengths to explain the ins and the outs of fundraising for a origin that many outside Ukraine inactive neglect to understand, despite nearly 4 years of war. He describes the spreadsheets, the essential record-keeping, and yet the formal designation of Dzyga’s Paw by the Ukrainian government as an authoritative nonprofit organization. He besides shares individual stories about close friends who leave for conflict and who never return – a reality faced by Ukrainians both in their homeland and abroad.
Zhluktenko’s book takes on an even more individual component erstwhile he writes about losing 1 of his biggest supporters – his parent – to cancer. any of the book’s most passionately written passages are Zhluktenko’s accounts of dealing with doctors during his mother’s treatments. His dedication to his parent and her caretaking mirrors his dedication to his fundraising causes and to Ukraine’s independence. He openly discusses grief and its vicious cycles and how each 1 is compounded by not only that related to his mother’s death, but the emotions surrounding losing friends and the dense toll of war. What truly stands out, nonetheless, is Zhluktenko’s determination to overcome his depression and to return to ensuring that the Ukrainian military’s tech needs could be met.
Even though the war in Ukraine has, in many ways, faded from global headlines, Ordinary Guy at War shines a much-needed light on those who make organizations like Dzyga’s Paw successful – the donors. Zhluktenko writes with large gratitude to those who have donated even the smallest amounts in order to support Ukraine. He recounts receiving the smallest donations from people who explained that the amount they donated was all they could donate and that they wished they could donate more. He explains working with donors who, despite having no connections whatsoever to Ukraine, donated large amounts of money to the nation’s cause. Most of all, Zhluktenko maintains that – during a time erstwhile grifting and greed caused large scepticism about donating and fundraising among the wider population – transparency about the monetary donations, the equipment purchased, and the military units supported was key to Dzyga’s Paw’s success.
Zhluktenko does not shy distant from the harsh household separations caused by the war, peculiarly for those Ukrainians who have household in Russia and/or Russia-supporting household members. He boldly reminds readers that “freedom is not free, and if you have freedom, make certain you appreciate it—because it is very fragile. Totalitarian actors like Russia can destruct it at any time.” Thus, in its examination of Russia’s historical colonialism and imperialism concerning Ukraine, Ordinary Guy at War mirrors the groundbreaking illustrated pocket guide Russian Colonialism 101.
Ordinary Guy at War is, indeed, 1 of the most essential books to appear from Ukraine in the past decade. Zhluktenko’s communicative inspires its audience to proceed to support the Ukrainian people and their fight for independency and for sovereignty – especially at a time erstwhile capitulation to tyranny arrives guised as viable peace deals. More so, Ordinary Guy at War testifies to how a single individual can take their talents and passions and transform them into a tool for the life-changing, even life-saving, greater good.
Ordinary Guy at War by Dimko Zhluktenko. Kovyla Publishing, 2025
Nicole Yurcaba is simply a Ukrainian-American of Hutsul/Lemko origin. A poet and essayist, her poems and reviews have appeared in Appalachian Heritage, Atlanta Review, Seneca Review, fresh east Europe, and Ukraine’s Euromaidan Press. Nicole holds an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University, teaches poesy workshops for confederate fresh Hampshire University, and is in the Humanities faculty at Blue Ridge Community and method College in the United States. She besides serves as a guest book reviewer for Sage Cigarettes, Tupelo Quarterly, Colorado Review, and confederate Review of Books.
