“I’m proud to have been born Ukrainian”: a review of Dimko Zhluktenko’s Ordinary Guy at War

Dimko Zhluktenko posing with is book Photo: The author's private Linkedin account

Dimko Zhluktenko describes himself as an ordinary guy, but in reality, he is anything but. Before the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he worked in the tech industry, and he and his girlfriend, Ira, were fortunate enough to have the time and means to travel the world. When Russia invaded in February 2022, Zhluktenko, like many other Ukrainians, found himself at a personal crossroads. He could continue working his well-paying job in tech, or he could dedicate himself fully to helping the Ukrainian war effort. In a brave and selfless move, Zhluktenko chose the second option. He quickly set to work organizing donation items and funds for the Ukrainian military, and, with the help of Ira and a little inspiration from their dog, Dzyga, Zhluktenko began bringing much needed tech items, like drones, to the Ukrainian military. In his book Ordinary Guy at War (Kovyla Publishing, 2025), Dimko Zhluktenko offers a new kind of war narrative, one rooted not only in Ukrainian culture and identity – and the ongoing struggle to preserve them – but also in sheer humanity and selflessness.

While most emerging Russo-Ukrainian war narratives share stories from the battlefield and account for the psychological, emotional and even physical toll paid by Ukrainian soldiers each and every day, Zhluktenko’s book offers its audience a glance behind the fundraising scene. After all, fundraising via his organization “Dzyga’s Paw” is how Zhluktenko first contributed to the war effort until he eventually enlisted in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Zhluktenko goes to great lengths to explain the ins and the outs of fundraising for a cause that many outside Ukraine still fail to understand, despite nearly four years of war. He describes the spreadsheets, the necessary record-keeping, and eventually the formal recognition of Dzyga’s Paw by the Ukrainian government as an official nonprofit organization. He also shares personal stories about close friends who leave for battle and who never return – a reality faced by Ukrainians both in their homeland and abroad.

Zhluktenko’s book takes on an even more personal element when he writes about losing one of his biggest supporters – his mother – to cancer. Some of the book’s most passionately written passages are Zhluktenko’s accounts of dealing with doctors during his mother’s treatments. His dedication to his mother and her caretaking mirrors his dedication to his fundraising causes and to Ukraine’s independence. He openly discusses grief and its vicious cycles and how each one is compounded by not only that related to his mother’s death, but the emotions surrounding losing friends and the heavy toll of war. What truly stands out, nonetheless, is Zhluktenko’s determination to overcome his depression and to return to ensuring that the Ukrainian military’s tech needs could be met.

Even though the war in Ukraine has, in many ways, faded from global headlines, Ordinary Guy at War shines a much-needed light on those who make organizations like Dzyga’s Paw successful – the donors. Zhluktenko writes with great gratitude to those who have donated even the smallest amounts in order to support Ukraine. He recounts receiving the smallest donations from people who explained that the amount they donated was all they could donate and that they wished they could donate more. He explains working with donors who, despite having no connections whatsoever to Ukraine, donated large amounts of money to the nation’s cause. Most of all, Zhluktenko maintains that – during a time when grifting and greed caused great scepticism about donating and fundraising among the wider population – transparency about the monetary donations, the equipment purchased, and the military units supported was key to Dzyga’s Paw’s success.

Zhluktenko does not shy away from the harsh family separations caused by the war, particularly for those Ukrainians who have family in Russia and/or Russia-supporting family members. He boldly reminds readers that “freedom is not free, and if you have freedom, make sure you appreciate it—because it is very fragile. Totalitarian actors like Russia can destroy it at any time.” Thus, in its examination of Russia’s historic colonialism and imperialism concerning Ukraine, Ordinary Guy at War mirrors the groundbreaking illustrated pocket guide Russian Colonialism 101.

Ordinary Guy at War is, indeed, one of the most necessary books to emerge from Ukraine in the past decade. Zhluktenko’s story inspires its audience to continue to support the Ukrainian people and their fight for independence and for sovereignty – especially at a time when capitulation to tyranny arrives guised as viable peace deals. More so, Ordinary Guy at War testifies to how a single individual can take their talents and passions and transform them into a tool for the life-changing, even life-saving, greater good.

Ordinary Guy at War by Dimko Zhluktenko. Kovyla Publishing, 2025

Nicole Yurcaba is a Ukrainian-American of Hutsul/Lemko origin. A poet and essayist, her poems and reviews have appeared in Appalachian Heritage, Atlanta Review, Seneca Review, New Eastern Europe, and Ukraine’s Euromaidan Press. Nicole holds an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University, teaches poetry workshops for Southern New Hampshire University, and is in the Humanities faculty at Blue Ridge Community and Technical College in the United States. She also serves as a guest book reviewer for Sage Cigarettes, Tupelo Quarterly, Colorado Review, and Southern Review of Books.

Book reivew, Russian invasion of Ukraine, soldier, Ukraine at war, Ukrainian culture, Ukrainian literature