Thinking With the Blood. Owen Matthews

      

Thinking with the Blood

      Published by Newsweek Insights

      © Newsweek Limited 2014

      Newsweek Europe Editor-in-Chief

      Richard Addis

      Newsweek Insights Publisher

      Sheila Bounford

      Newsweek Insights Development Editor

      Cathy Galvin

      Cover design by The Curved House

      & Jess Landon

      Cover image iStock

      This book was produced using Pressbooks.com

      ISBN 978-1-910460-30-6 (kindle)

      ISBN 978-1-910460-31-3 (ePub)

      ISBN 978-1-910460-32-0 (print)

      All rights reserved. Reasonable portions of text up to 100 words may be quoted in reviews, referencing articles and social media without prior permission, but with proper attribution. No portions of this publication longer than 100 words may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means without permission in writing from Newsweek.

      Contents

        Prologue

        Harry Potter

        Six months that changed the world

        The borderland

        Kiev: Run, Fatboy, Run

        1. The things they left behind

        2. What a revolution looks like

        3. Will you lead me across the Maidan?

        4. The future was Orange

        5. Enter the little green men

        6. Damaged jihadi peasants

        7. Gogolfest

        8. America stands with you

        9. Dnipropetrovsk

        10. Nothing here at all

        11. Carve up the Muscovites!

        Donetsk: For God and Motherland

        12. The Road to Donetsk

        13. And the winner gets a Porsche

        14. Onward to victory!

        15. The bleeding idols

        16. Havana Banana nights

        17. Rebel love

        18. Let’s do the Time Warp again

        19. Heroes

        20. We are good people here

        21. Edinburgh: Donetsk is with you

        Moscow Through the Looking Glass

        22. It's hard to be God

        23. Belorussian Parmesan

        24. In the distortion zone

        25. Nothing is true and everything is possible

        26. The suitcase mood

        27. Midnight Facebook conversation

        28. House 12

        29. Moscow diary

        30. God save the Tsar!

        About the author

1

      2

      Harry Potter

      The kid with the Kalashnikov isn’t happy.

      The kid with the Kalashnikov isn’t happy. He scowls at us from under a rain cape, water dripping off the peak of his army cap. He flourishes my passport.

      “Britain.” he says. “You are from Britain.”

      I can only agree. I try a tentative smile.

      We are standing at a rebel roadblock on the main Donetsk to Zaporozhiye highway which does not appear to be under any kind of adult supervision. The skinny soldier with my documents stands alone under a lashing September rainstorm. His even younger comrades huddle under a nearby tarpaulin draped over a pile of sandbags, eyeing us idly. I have seen this dangerously unpredictable stage of adolescent boredom before, in various war-torn places far from here.

      He is a scrawny farm boy, no more than twenty. He has one of those broad, round South Russian faces, too toothy to be handsome. But it is the kind of open face which should have a smile on it. Instead, his mouth is soured into an ugly pout. He leans into the car with a weary, murderous langour.

      “Tell your Daniel Radcliffe,” says the young rebel. “Tell him that I used to love Harry Potter. But then I read that he was a drug addict. Tell him I’m very disappointed.”

      The kid shoots me a look of pure anger, which makes what he’s just said suddenly sad, rather than funny.

      “I’m sorry to hear that. But I don’t think its true.”

      The