July 9th 2026

After a long absence, Yuriy returns on July 9 and explains he’s been overwhelmed by depression and insomnia while continuing his military duties amid constant bombings, personal losses, and worry for his seriously ill father far away. With sleepless nights stretching on, he began revisiting and rewriting stories from his years reporting wars and revolutions in the Middle East, shaping them into something new. Friends pushed the manuscript to a major Ukrainian publisher, and it’s now being edited for an October release—if it can survive the reality of a Kharkiv publishing world repeatedly hit by Russian attacks. The result is a book called "The Last Superhero in Gaza," a war book with little shooting and much more friendship, love, despair, fear—and Elvis.

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