ukraine and spread more hate to ukraine among russian population. your 2018 novel gray beast, it s set in the donbass region, which of course has been at war since 2014 and is really central to what is happening now. how does it feel as an author having written about that and then finding your country in this situation a few years later? well, first of all, i want to say i didn t plan to write this novel, and i didn t want to write about the war until the war is over. but i met a lot of refugees from donetsk and kyiv. and one of them told me he is driving his car every month to the front line where there are seven families left, and he is bringing them medicine and everything they need, and they are paying him with reserves, vegetable, pickles, et cetera. and i understood that the gray zone, the strip of land between positions of separatist russians