"[The changing borders of Ukraine during the Soviet period] Under any [totalitarian] regime you get used to it, and you more than cooperate. You become part of this regime. In my novel Dom’s Dream Kingdom, I used the story of my grandfather. He was a Soviet military pilot. He became part of the Soviet regime. But he was from the east of Ukraine, where the Holodomor [now recognised in Ukraine as an act of genocide] occurred. His family were victims of the that man-made famine, and he had terrible memories about that. I also remember my grandfather explaining to me the fear he felt if the Soviet army could potentially send him to Czechoslovakia in 1968. But regimes force people to do terrible things. As a Ukrainian I felt there was something wrong with that, and I should be somehow even ashamed. This is not what is happening in Russia today. There is no shame."