The Fight of Our Lives: My Time with Zelenskyy, Ukraine's Battle for Democracy, and What It Means for the World

by Iuliia Mendel

Overview

When Ukrainian journalist Iuliia Mendel got the call she had been hired to work for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, she had no idea what was to come.

In this frank and “moving” (The Washington Post) insider account, Zelenskyy’s former press secretary tells the story of his improbable rise from popular comedian to the president of Ukraine. Mendel had a front row seat to many of the key events preceding the 2022 Russian invasion. From attending meetings between Zelenskyy and Putin and other European leaders, visiting the front lines in Donbas, to fielding press inquiries after the infamous phone calls between Donald Trump and Zelenskyy that led to Trump’s first impeachment.

A “spirited account of history in the making” (Publishers Weekly), The Fight of Our Lives sheds light on the massive economic problems facing Ukraine and the entrenched corrupt oligarchs in league with Russia. Mendel witnessed the Kremlin’s repeated attacks to discredit Zelenskyy through disinformation and an army of bots and trolls.

Woven into her account are details about her own life as a member of Zelenskyy’s new Ukraine, and his efforts to transform his country from a poor, backward Soviet state into a vibrant, prosperous European democracy. Written with the sound of Russian bombs and exploding shells in the background, Mendel details life lived under Russian siege in 2022. She says goodbye to her fiancé who joins the front lines, like so many other Ukrainian men. Throughout this story of Zelenskyy, Ukraine, and its extraordinary people, “The Fight of Our Lives shows us how Ukraine’s fight for freedom is our fight—humanity’s fight against tyranny” (Kurt Volker, former United States ambassador to NATO).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781668012727
Publisher:	Atria/One Signal Publishers
Publication date:	12/03/2024
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.38(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Iuliia Mendel is a Ukrainian journalist who served as press secretary and spokesperson for Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine, from 2019 until 2021. Mendel has more than fourteen years of journalism experience on TV and in print media and her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, VICE, Politico Europe, and many more. Follow her on Twitter @IuliiaMendel. The Fight of Our Lives is her first book.

Table of Contents

Brief Timeline of Modern, Independent Ukraine ix

A Note from the Author xiii

Preface: "I Need Ammunition, Not a Ride" xv

Chapter 1 Zelenskyy's Landslide Victory 1

Chapter 2 The Poorest Country in Europe 15

Chapter 3 Becoming Press Secretary to the President 39

Chapter 4 The President's Team 63

Chapter 5 Seeking Peace in Donbas 79

Chapter 6 The Press vs. the President 99

Chapter 7 The Negotiator 117

Chapter 8 The Power of Language 127

Chapter 9 Oligarchs and Fake News 149

Chapter 10 Learning to Live in a Democracy 171

Chapter 11 Disinformation Wars 181

Chapter 12 The Fight of Our Lives 193

Acknowledgments 207

Editorial Reviews

Moving.... [Mendel] helps demystify the dictator [Vladimir Putin] whom the Western media has long portrayed as having the cunning and wit of a fearless Bond villain... Her reflections on her relationship with the Ukrainian language at a time when Ukraine’s cultural ties to Russia have been all but severed are also extremely important to the cultural discourse.”
—The Washington Post

“By sharing her own story, Iuliia Mendel offers a powerful window into the soul of modern Ukraine. The Fight of Our Lives brings you inside a generation raised in transformation and provides vital context around Putin’s war on Ukraine. Her journey and her nation’s will move you and push you to learn more.”
—Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, New York Times bestselling author of The Daughters of Kobani

“Iuliia Mendel’s book reminds us that war is not only about machines and destruction—it is also about people and ideas. The Fight of Our Lives shows us how Ukraine’s fight for freedom is our fight—humanity’s fight against tyranny.”
—Kurt Volker, former United States ambassador to NATO

“In earnest and perceptive prose, Mendel’s The Fight of Our Lives tells the gripping story of Ukraine’s determined coming-of-age amid the most ghastly of circumstances.”
—Marci Shore, associate professor of history at Yale University and author of The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution

“Who is Mr. Zelenskyy? Few people who write about the Ukrainian president and his surprising meteoric rise, first to the top of Ukrainian politics and then to the status of America’s most popular foreign leader, know him as well as Iuliia Mendel. In this book she shares with the world her personal story as the first press secretary of Mr. Zelenskyy and the story of the president and the country he leads. This is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand Ukraine of today and the values it fights for.”
—Serhii Plokhy, Mykhailo S. Hrushevs'kyi Professor of Ukrainian History, Harvard University, and author of The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine and Atoms and Ashes: A Global History of Nuclear Disasters

"Iuliia Mendel's extraordinary story shows us her Ukraine, a young country that chose progress with President Zelenskyy’s transformative election but now finds itself under attack in Vladimir Putin's war on democracy."
—Ivan Mikloš, Slovakian economist and politician, former minister of finance of Slovakia

“A spirited account of history in the making.”
—Publishers Weekly

“A closely observed [and] nuanced portrait of a leader in a time of crisis who has definitely risen to the occasion.”
—Kirkus

From the Publisher

08/08/2022

Journalist Mendel debuts with a brisk and flattering account of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s fight against Russian interference. Mendel, who served as Zelenskyy’s press secretary from 2019 to 2021, traces her former boss’s swift rise from sitcom star to president and contends that Zelenskyy “realized early on that his primary job was to become the embodiment of Ukraine as a fully independent, sovereign state.” She details his efforts to stamp out corruption and limit Russian meddling in the news media and Ukrainian politics, and describes the steep learning curve his government faced in trying to right the country’s struggling economy while dealing with Covid-19 and large “rent-a-crowd” protests organized by oligarchs who opposed his reformist agenda. Mendel also offers a stout defense of Zelenskyy’s 2019 decision to open peace talks with the Kremlin to end the war in the Donbas, and shares tragic details of the current conflict. Though the portrait that emerges of Zelenskyy feels more adulatory than authentic, this is a spirited account of history in the making. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Jennifer Jill Araya’s narration bubbles over with the author’s enthusiasm for Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. Mendel is the president’s former press secretary. Araya adds a soupçon of Mendel's anger toward Zelensky’s rivals to the discussion of Ukraine’s political environment before the recent war. When Mendel turns to the current invasion by Russia, mostly in the last chapter, Araya goes full throttle in expressing her outrage over the Mariupol bombings and the West’s reluctance to help Ukraine defend itself. With Araya stressing key points, Mendel discusses the use of social media and “fake news” to spread falsehoods. The audiobook opens with a timeline of events leading up to the invasion and an introduction from Mendel. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

SEPTEMBER 2022 - AudioFile

Jennifer Jill Araya’s narration bubbles over with the author’s enthusiasm for Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. Mendel is the president’s former press secretary. Araya adds a soupçon of Mendel's anger toward Zelensky’s rivals to the discussion of Ukraine’s political environment before the recent war. When Mendel turns to the current invasion by Russia, mostly in the last chapter, Araya goes full throttle in expressing her outrage over the Mariupol bombings and the West’s reluctance to help Ukraine defend itself. With Araya stressing key points, Mendel discusses the use of social media and “fake news” to spread falsehoods. The audiobook opens with a timeline of events leading up to the invasion and an introduction from Mendel. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

SEPTEMBER 2022 - AudioFile

2022-06-12
The former press secretary to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy lays out the stakes of the current war.

“Perhaps he had not always been a perfect leader,” writes Mendel. “There had been difficulty in mustering the necessary support around his initiatives, managing his staff, and navigating the shoals of partisan politics. But in the chaos of war he knew exactly what to do. He became our national protector.” Indeed, Zelenskyy came into his own as a wartime leader of unflinching courage and a deeply wrought conviction that Ukraine is a bulwark of Western democracy and a nation that belongs in the 21st century. By contrast, Mendel writes in a closely observed portrait, “there is only one way to describe Putin: ‘old age.’ No matter how much I looked at him and his delegation, no matter how much I listened, everything about them conveyed old age: old ideology, old principles, old behavior, old thoughts.” Readers will find a generally admiring but not entirely uncritical depiction of Zelenskyy as well. He is a masterful negotiator who understands that peace is preferable to war, for “only with peace can he focus on rebuilding his nation.” That rebuilding involves guiding Ukraine to forward-looking economic, social, and cultural standards and shaking off the power of oligarchs, but it also acknowledges that Ukraine is a multicultural society that includes ethnic Russians—who, in the course of the current war, have discovered that their language is now associated with “inhumanity and cruel aggression,” so much so that they’re switching to speaking Ukrainian as an expression of solidarity. Readers will also find a cleareyed look at both the reasons for Russia’s intransigence and the countervailing force of Ukrainian resistance in a war that “has burned away all that was artificial and superficial in our lives.”

A nuanced portrait of a leader in a time of crisis who has definitely risen to the occasion.

Kirkus Reviews