Acknowledgements: British Army Review #187

We wish to express our gratitude to the Ukrainians who so generously shared their time and their stories with us.

This would not have been possible without the generous support of the Madison Policy Forum or the access granted by the Ukrainian government for repeated research trips to Kyiv and the surrounding battlefields.

We wish to specifically thank Oleksandra (Sasha) Titorova for her extraordinary professionalism, dedicated effort, unflagging cheer and collegiality as she worked to facilitate this research in the field and from the greater Kyiv area in the midst of an ongoing war. Sasha set up interviews, researched events and translated for us. She did her work with compassion and empathy for those we interviewed. We are indebted to her.

We also wish to thank Zoe Flood, Phil Jones OBE, Svitlana Sudak, Alina Frolova, Lieutenant General (retired) Sir Paul Newton and Jenny Klochko for their advice and support.

We are grateful to Nicholas Riggs for producing the mapping featured in this publication and offer thanks to Andrew Simms for his tireless work in putting this special edition of The British Army Review together as editor. Any mistakes, errors or omissions are the authors alone.

James Sladden: I am grateful to Viktor Kovalenko who served in the Ukrainian Army and fought in the battle for Debaltseve in 2015. He wrote a blog about his experiences during the fighting. Viktor kindly met with me not long after the battle to talk about his experiences. Listening to him impressed on me the power and importance of each individual’s story in making sense of history.