Standoff (Kidnapped From Ukraine, #2)

Written by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

Scholastic
978-1-5461-0454-4
288 pp.
Ages 8–13
October 2025

 

As it had been for me reading Under Attack, the first book in Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch's Kidnapped From Ukraine series, delving into Standoff was a challenge. I knew to expect a sensitive but authentic story about the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but I also knew that it would be emotionally demanding of me because of my heritage. It was. But it was also eloquent and inspiring and well worth the read.

 

In the earlier Under Attack, readers are introduced to the Popkov family: dad Ivan who worked at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, mom Yaroslava who worked at a nail salon, and twelve-year-old twin sisters Dariia and Rada. When the first attack occurs in February of 2022, Dariia and her mom are separated from Rada and their dad. The first book covers Dariia's perspective and experiences, while Standoff is told from Rada's point of view from the onset of the first attack. While Dariia and their mom find shelter at a salon and other commercial buildings, Rada and her dad head to the steel plant with its extensive bunkers, and from which he will join up with the Territorial Defense . With the wise words, "Be brave but not stupid" (pg. 42), her dad leaves Rada in the care of the Yanin family: Mr. Yanin, an engineer; his son Viktor, a classmate of Rada's; and his nine-year-old daughter Alina. (Mrs. Yanin was killed in the attack on their apartment building.)

 

Each day is a scramble for food, clothing, water, heat and more. Still, the make-shift family connects with another family when Rada meets Lesia Stepanova. Lesia is sheltering in another bunker at the plant with both her grandmothers (Baba and Babushka), her sister-in-law Maiia, and Lesia's baby nephew Oleh. Lesia's mother is also in the Territorial Defense, while Lesia's older brother is in Moscow on a business trip. After they attempt to evacuate Mariupol during a ceasefire—which the Russians failed to observe—they add nine-year-old Mychailo Voron and a woman named Svetlana Boyko to their little group.

 

Their lives become a series of routines to help them get through each day, whether it is doing lessons, or toileting, or preparing and sharing their meager provisions. Hope comes with the promise of a ceasefire—more than once—though the Russians are quick to apprehend and attempt to transport Ukrainians to Russia. It's only when the Red Cross, the UN, and other international observers and aid are involved that those efforts are stymied.

 

Life is tenuous. On the inside of the plant, Rada and her new family struggle and worry and grieve. Outside, their challenges are both the same and different: worried for their loved ones, grappling with a lack of resources, terrified of being injured or killed, and never knowing whom they could trust. 

 

The attack and war on Ukraine has sadly been part of the news cycle for almost four years, but for many it is a story from "over there." Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch's stories, both Under Attack and Standoff, take a distant conflict and make it personal. This isn't happening faraway to people we don't know. It's happening to children, to the elderly, to parents, and to shopkeepers, neighbours, and people we care about. We feel their horror, recognize their anxieties, grasp their grief, and acknowledge their needs to hold on to whatever might offer comfort, whether a cat or a Motanka doll. Whether it's a middle grader reading this book and stunned by the horrific circumstances that Rada and her families, born and made, endure, or an older reader who understands the cruelty of others and the grief of loss, Standoff will hit hard. But Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch knows how to tell a story of immense tragedy by pairing it with resilience, affection, and hope. Even the title of the third book in the series, which releases in April, tells us that there is more to the twins' stories and, even with more hardships and loss, they endure. 

 

For an authentic and very personal perspective on the war in Ukraine, Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch offers a story of Ukrainians from Mariupol and what they saw and felt when the Russians attacked. She even offers more background in her "Author's Note" and the Q & A with which she appends Standoff, helping young people gain greater understanding about the events and the history behind the Russian invasion. We can only hope that with awareness comes understanding, and with time there will be a favourable resolution for the people of Ukraine.  

 

 • • • • • • •

 

Under Attack (January, 2025)

Standoff (October, 2025)

Still Alive (April, 2026)
 

Under Attack (Kidnapped From Ukraine, #1)

 

Written by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

 Scholastic

978-1-546104513

320 pp.

Ages 8-13

January 2025

 

Apologies to author Marsha Skrypuch and Scholastic for my tardy review of this exceptional novel. They kindly ensured I received a copy of Under Attack and, while a gripping read, it has an emotional component for me, making my reading of it far more challenging. But, because it is so well written and told with such compassion and insight, I could not stay away from Under Attack. Years from now, readers will look to Under Attack as an authentic commentary of how the attack on Ukraine that started in 2022 played out for children and their families. 

 

Twelve-year-old Dariia Popkova's story did not just start on February 24, 2022, although this is the starting point of Under Attack. Her life in her family's fourth floor apartment in Mariupol would have been typical. Her father worked at the Azovstal steel plant. Her mother worked at a nail salon. And Dariia and her twin sister Rada went to school, had friends, did crafts, and loved using their cell phones. Then Putin declares a "special military operation" to free Ukrainians from their "Nazi" regime. When the first bomb hits their apartment, Dariia and her mother are separated from Dariia's dad and Rada. With this begins a separation of place and experience as they try to find their way back together.

 

Dariia and her mother shelter in a basement of a school supply depot with many others. Some are strangers like Sonya Marynovska and her four-year-old daughter Ariadna and two Tatar boys Rustem and Asan, but also a classmate Natalia and her dog Mimi. From their basement base, the twenty-eight hunker down, make unsafe outings to scavenge for food and water and get cell phone reception. They are "eating practically nothing, drinking bad water, and hearing the thunder of nonstop bombing overhead." (p. 53) Weeks turn into months and though Dariia and her mom are first looking to get to the Avostal steel plant where her father's army reserve is stationed and Rada is safe, ultimately they get the message to get to the humanitarian corridor and go to Zaporizhzhia, a city in southeast Ukraine. 

This wasn't a war.
This was the Russian Federation executing civilians because they were Ukrainians.
It was terrifying and senseless. (p. 82) 

Stealing an abandoned car, amidst the continued shelling, roaming tanks with white Z markings, and marauding Russian soldiers, Dariia, her mother, Rustem, Ariadna and Mimi the dog don't get very far before they are stopped and sent to a "filtration center" where they are told they would be evacuated to safer parts of Russia. 

 

Dariia, now separated from her mother, is sent with Rustem and other children–Katya, Volodya, Ihor, Dmytro and siblings Lilia and Vadim–to the Romashka Children's Camp where they are told about Putin, the benevolent president, who has helped rescue them from the Nazi regime of Zelensky. The children know it is propaganda but play along.

It made me angry that the Russians had brought me to this prison that looked and smelled like freedom. (p. 136)

When they are sent to their respective Russian "foster homes," the children vow to get in touch whenever they can with a Gmail account Liliya and Vadim had created to drop messages. Separated from any family they might have and each other, they are determined to keep their connections to each other, to the truth and their homeland.

This could be historical fiction. It could have been a story from the 1940s. I wish that it were. But it's a contemporary story from 2022 through the present, recounting the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the continuing war in a fictionalized story. Someday Under Attack will be historical fiction and readers will shake their heads at the senselessness of the war. I can only hope that they'll be looking back from a time when Ukraine is free from Russian oppression and violence.

While a fictionalized story, Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch takes the time and effort to understand the truths, like the truth about how the war started, the propaganda levelled at both Ukrainians and Russians, and the impact of the war on Ukrainians, from children to workers to the elderly. It is a tough story because of these truths which are so distressing and disheartening. Still Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch is a master at telling such stories (e.g., Winterkill, Traitors Among Us, Dance of the Banished, and Making Bombs for Hitler), ensuring a sensitivity to her characters and her readers, and a thoroughness and accuracy of details.

It's fitting that I review Under Attack on a day which Christians commemorate as Good Friday. Like the day, this book is one of grief and injustice. And it is one that requires contemplation. We can only hope that after the grief comes a resurrection for Ukraine and a future of peace. Only history, and Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch's follow-up books in the Kidnapped From Ukraine series, will tell.

• • • • • • •

Standoff, Book 2 in Kidnapped from Ukraine, releases in October, 2025.