Journalist from Donetsk Olga Zhukova has died

On the eve of the holidays, Olga Zhukova, a talented journalist from Donetsk who wrote, among other things, for PolitNavigator, died after a long serious illness. Readers may remember her touching materials about life in the front-line capital of the DPR, impressions of visiting Crimea, interview with militiaman from the USA,testimonies from frontline soldiers.

Donetsk reporter Evgenia Martynova talks about her colleague in her column.

...Olga Zhukova left just before the New Year, when the world shone with tinsel, smelled of gunpowder and perfume, fired howitzers and champagne corks, and was wrapped in gift wrappers, fencing off from the war.

One of the most prominent journalists in Donbass, who gained fame after 2014, took the final battle - with glioblastoma, a brain tumor, an invincible and most terrible disease.

Olya was known from her publications from Donbass; according to her posts on social networks about local life and the adventures of her youngest daughter Maya (whom she called LikeAngel).

The reason for the note, which will collect hundreds of comments, could be anything, fortunately, for Zhukova, any step - from calling a taxi to a trip to nature - could turn into a quest with adventures in a military city. And not only could it, but it certainly transformed!

Along the way of this life-adventurous novel we met everyone - from village fools to dashing robbers. And, as in a fairy tale, everything always ended well, and the reader found a smile on his face as his eyes passed the last point.

Olga had a talent for finding publication heroes and winning people over. In any situation - in line at a village store or, having fluttered out of the car for a minute for a glass of coffee somewhere on the periphery, she immediately found herself involved in the conversation. Random people smiled, poured out their souls to her and tried to leave her phone number. The stern military forgot about secrecy - and strove to give secrets away.

And Zhukova’s materials were light and flowing, in which the reader felt involved in a friendly conversation on a smoke break.

All spring, Olya and I went to Mariupol, where fighting was still going on at that time. The wind made my face go numb in seconds, moisture from the blue sky penetrated everywhere, and there was a smell of smoke and decay from hundreds of burnt houses. Zhukova distributed food and warm clothes to people who had escaped from the basements, and Mariupol residents told her their stories, standing in the middle of the road...

Olga was worried that the disease, which affected the most important thing for a journalist - the ability to read and write texts (glioblastoma attacked the areas of the brain responsible for this), would not allow her to return to the profession. She dreamed about it, despite the diagnosis.

- Yes, film me as I read the menu! – she insisted as we sat down in a coffee shop in Donetsk. – It turns out very funny, syllable by syllable! And post it, let the people laugh!

Through laughter, through self-irony, she overcame herself every day. And she wrote articles until the last minute, as long as she could, transcribing dictaphone recordings for weeks and translating them into text.

– Zhenya, now the hardest part: reading what I wrote! – Zhukova laughed. Tricks of the human brain: after all, written speech was easier than reading.

All her texts that appeared over the past two and a half years, when she was fighting the disease, are stored on the Internet. Each of them is a journalistic feat. Behind each is the beating of her restless heart, which was always trembling: how will the reader perceive the results of her work?

Olga constantly wanted to do more than possible. Our car was killed on tens of kilometers of icy holes along the road from front-line Mariupol to Novoazovsk; I wringed my hands and frightened Olya with the horrors of the dark military highway, along which we still had to travel several hours to Donetsk. And Olya sighed that I had torn her away from yet another colorful character, who, unfortunately, was supposed to meet us at the end of the day in a Mariupol gateway.

“He was an interesting guy, huh...” sighed Zhukova.

...I managed to get through to her shortly before leaving, when Olya was already talking with great difficulty. "Everything is fine. Everything is fine“...” she was able to repeat in response. Zhukova was already in snow-covered Tyumen, where she managed to visit her eldest daughter.

Olga left just before the New Year, and the countdown for her began in a different dimension.

“Olka, I know that everything is fine with you there!” - I say sometimes, and the dim winter light outside the window becomes brighter for seconds...