Darya Tsymbalyuk - "Ecocide in Ukraine" - Jonathan Flatley

Darya Tysmbalyuk will discuss Ecocide in Ukraine: The Environmental Cost of Russia's War. She will be joined in conversation by Jonathan Flatley. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion. 

At the Co-op.

RSVP Here — please note your RSVP is requested but not required. 

About the book: Russia’s war on Ukraine has not only destroyed millions of human lives, it has also been catastrophic for the environment. Forests and fields have been burned to the ground, animal and plant species pushed to the brink of extinction, soil and water contaminated with oil products, debris, and mines. On a single day in June 2023, the breached Kakhovka Dam flooded thousands of kilometres of protected natural habitat, as well as villages, towns, and agricultural land. The devastation of biodiversity and ecosystems across Ukraine has been immeasurable, long-lasting and its consequences stretch beyond national borders.

In this poignant book, Ukrainian researcher Darya Tsymbalyuk offers an intimate portrait of her beloved homeland against the backdrop of Russia’s war and ecocide. In elegant and moving prose, she describes the damage to the country’s rivers, the grasslands of the steppes, animals, insects, and colonies of birds, as a result of Russia’s ground and air operations. Alongside the everyday experiences of people in Ukraine living with the environmental consequences of the war, we share Tsymbalyuk’s own reckoning with the changing nature of cherished places and the loss of familiar worlds caused by the ongoing Russian invasion.

About the author: Darya Tsymbalyuk is an interdisciplinary researcher and creative practitioner whose work lies at the intersection of environmental humanities and artistic research. She is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization (CEGU), University of Chicago, and the author of the book Ecocide in Ukraine: The Environmental Cost of Russia’s War (Polity, 2025). In addition to writing, Tsymbalyuk works with images through drawing, painting, collage, and film essays.

About the interlocutor: Jonathan Flatley is a professor in the English Department and the Committe on Environment, Geography and Urbanization at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Affective Mapping: Melancholia and the Politics of Modernism (Harvard University Press, 2008), and Like Andy Warhol (University of Chicago Press, 2017). He is currently finishing one book called Black Leninism: How Revolutionary Counter-Moods Are Made and starting another on liking and being like trees.