Colin Freeman

Foreign correspondent Colin Freeman gives a sense of life on the Ukrainian frontline including eyewitness accounts of key events in the first two years of the war such as the sieges of Kyiv and Mariupol, the liberation of Kherson and the failed counter-offensive of 2023.

Freeman tells the story of the war through the eyes of more than a dozen foreign military volunteers who answered President Zelensky’s appeal for help in the days after Russian tanks first rolled into Ukraine. They include idealists, adventure-seekers and ex-criminals seeking redemption. Freeman describes how some fled at the first sign of trouble, some became heroes and many were killed. Freeman says the foreign fighters were a shambolic disorganised bunch created without consultation with army chiefs, and this led to many squabbles and even shootings within the ranks.

Freeman is a former chief foreign correspondent of The Sunday Telegraph and now a freelance writer on foreign affairs and on books including for The Telegraph. He has reported on the Russian invasion of Ukraine for The Telegraph and Spectator. His previous books include Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: The Mission to Rescue the Hostages the World Forgot and Kidnapped: Life as a Somali Pirate Hostage about his experience of being abducted in Somalia.