The day before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Yevgenia Belorusets, a Kyiv-based photographer, spoke to me about the people who lived through the Russian-led separtist conflict that began in 2014. The new English translation of her fictional short story collection “Lucky Breaks” is to be published this March and is based on her interviews conducted during her travels in 2015 and 2016 to eastern Ukraine for a documentary photography project.

The eight-year conflict in eastern Ukraine has often been drowned in disinformation and tainted political narratives. Belorusets set out to correct this. I spoke with her about the importance of telling unheard stories, in a conversation that has been edited for length and clarity.

Your book shows what everyday life has been like for eastern Ukrainian factory workers, florists, manicurists, cosmetologists since 2014. Why did you decide that these fragmentary stories had to be told?

In this tragic situation in eastern Ukraine, violence emerges as an unnatural reality imposed from outside. Discussions usually center around big politics and trying to stop the aggressor. And that's normal. But my work allows me to look at the situation in more detail, to go deeper to the level where the interpersonal is more important than big politics.