LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: On the day I'm supposed to speak to Lara Marlowe and the Ukrainian soldier she profiles in her new book, Lt. Yulia Mykytenko can't make the interview.
LARA MARLOWE: She says, I must warn you that a great possibility that I won't be able to join this time. We have a massive assault all over the front line, and I need to be online and on the phone.
FADEL: Marlowe is used to it. She spent months chronicling 29-year-old Yulia's life in a first-person account of what it's like to be a Ukrainian woman leading a unit fighting Russian forces in her homeland. Sometimes Yulia would have to miss meetings to pick up dead bodies of her comrades, inform their families of the deaths or do drone reconnaissance of a battle. Her life on the front lines is the story Marlowe tells in "How Good It Is I Have No Fear of Dying."
MARLOWE: I wanted to write about women in the Ukrainian army because I had read that there were 60,000 of them, of whom about 10,000 are in combat positions. They put me in touch with several women. But the one who really, really impressed me was Yulia Mykytenko. I started by putting my foot in, and I said, are you the lady drone operator? And she said, I am the commander of a platoon, of a reconnaissance platoon. And I said, oh, sorry, sorry (laughter). And so gradually, over about an hour, her whole life story came out - how she had joined the army to be with Ilia Serbin, how he was killed in a Russian bombardment, how she stayed in the army. Her father self-immolated on the Maidan in 2020 because he thought that Zelenskyy was capitulating to Russia. So she's known a terrible tragedy. And yet she seemed very calm, just a really lovely person.
FADEL: I think people often forget that the full-scale invasion in 2022 was not the beginning of this war, that Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, that Yulia fought before...
MARLOWE: Yes.
FADEL: ...And her husband was killed, as you write in the book, in 2018, and her father made that protest before the full-scale invasion.
MARLOWE: Yes.
FADEL: You open the book - she's gotten out of the military, and she's kind of trying to figure out what to do with her life. And the full-scale invasion begins, and she goes right to that recruitment center. And I thought it was so telling the way people kind of dismissed her, right?
MARLOWE: Uh-huh.
FADEL: And everybody's getting a gun. Everybody's getting recruited, and she just sleeps there until she joins the territorial defense. If you could, just tell us about her military career, the challenges she's faced as a woman and the way she led the way for other women to join the front lines in Ukraine.
MARLOWE: Well, she joined in 2016. Initially, she was assigned to admin work. She was a secretary and accountant. And she was furious, and so she started complaining, saying, I am a loyal citizen of Ukraine. I joined the army as a volunteer. I should stand guard duty like every man. And eventually, one morning, her name was on the roster for guard duty, and that was a small triumph for her. She was 21 years old then. And then she found out that, since she had a university degree, she could become a commissioned officer. And her commanding officer said, would you like to head this reconnaissance unit? And she said yes. And when she became the lieutenant in charge of the reconnaissance unit, 16 out of 20 men in the unit transferred out. They did not want to be under a woman's orders. She was devastated, but she kept her unit running with just four men. But several of them did return to the unit because word went round that she was actually a very good commander.
FADEL: You know, I was thinking about this, too, as I read her experience because it starts with the first booms of the full-scale invasion beginning. And in 2025, I'm reading it at a time when U.S. support for this war is in question. How does Yulia feel about the incoming administration and other Ukrainian soldiers feel about the incoming administration and what this might mean for Ukraine's war?
MARLOWE: She's obviously very, very interested, and they've been talking about it certainly since November. They had become very disillusioned with the Biden administration because she had told me it was like "Groundhog Day." Nothing would change. But I think that they probably trust Trump a little bit more than I would. They really have very high hopes in him that he will not betray them.
FADEL: Can I ask why they have this trust? I mean, because a lot of the president's supporters really wanted the U.S. to stop spending any money on Ukraine and this war and to get out of it. So what makes them hope?
MARLOWE: I think if you're under fire day after day, if you're getting shelled and somebody says, I'm going to put an end to this, I think you want to believe them.
FADEL: You know, it was interesting reading your book in this moment in the U.S. when, you know, women's role in the military is being questioned. The secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, in the past said women shouldn't serve in combat roles in the U.S. military. He's since walked that back - has said, as long as they meet standards. What does Yulia's story say about women in combat?
MARLOWE: I read Pete Hegseth's quote to her, and she laughed, and she said, that's just what - that's exactly like the post-Soviet generals in Ukraine because, you know, the older military brass would have served in the Soviet army. And there's a bit of tension between the young officers like Yulia and the old fogies.
FADEL: You called the book "How Good It Is I Have No Fear of Dying." Where did this come from - this title?
MARLOWE: It's the first line of a very famous poem in Ukraine, which was written by a dissident poet called Vasyl Stus, and he died in a Soviet labor camp in 1985. But for me, it really embodies what the book is about because Yulia's husband, Ilia, was not afraid to die. He died for his country. Her father was not afraid to die, and in his way, he died for his country. Yulia is not afraid to die. She really does not have any fear of dying.
FADEL: Wow.
MARLOWE: And it's emblematic of the whole country, of everyone in Ukraine who is resisting Russian aggression, who is saying no to occupation, who's saying, we will fight for our independence.
FADEL: Lara Marlowe is the author of "How Good It Is I Have No Fear Of Dying: Lieutenant Yulia Mykytenko's Fight For Ukraine." Thank you so much for your time.
MARLOWE: Thank you, Leila.
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