On the morning of Feb. 24, 2022, Ukrainian artist and writer Yevgenia Belorusets woke in her Kyiv apartment to find eight missed calls on her cellphone. “At first, I thought something had happened to my family and that my friends were trying to reach me,” she writes in War Diary, translated by Greg Nissan (New Directions/isolarii, March 7). “I called my cousin because her beautiful voice, brave and rational, has always had a calming effect on me. All she said was, ‘Kyiv has been shelled. A war has broken out.’ ”

For the next 41 days, Belorusets, author of the novel Lucky Breaks, kept a near-daily journal of everyday life in Kyiv during the Russia-Ukraine war. The Russian invasion, envisioned by Vladimir Putin as a swift blitzkrieg, was met with fierce resistance and resolve by the Ukrainian people, and the war has, shockingly, now entered its second year.

That means that some of the first books about the conflict are also reaching readers. Many, like War Diary, are first-person, on-the-ground reports. Belorusets describes the mood in Kyiv; recalls conversations with family, friends, and strangers; ruminates on the larger meanings of life during wartime. The author’s photographs of people and cityscapes are scattered throughout. Our reviewer calls the book a “soberingly spare and humane record of disastrous events.”

Over the course of the war’s first year, the world has come to know Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, through his many public appearances, typically dressed in a simple khaki T-shirt. A Message From Ukraine: Speeches, 2019-2022 (Crown, 2022) collects 16 addresses delivered since he first assumed the presidency, including the 32-second video he shared on social media not long after the invasion began, disproving rumors that he had fled the country: “Good evening, everyone. We are all here. Our soldiers are here. Civil society is here. We defend our independence. And this is how it will always be from now on.”

If Belorusets’ reflections are personal and intimate, Zelenskyy’s words were intended to bolster the Ukrainian populace and rally the support of other nations. In a starred review, our critic called the book “defiant and stirring,” urging readers to “buy this book to honor [Zelenskyy’s] resistance to tyranny.”

One unique offering from the conflict’s first year is Ukrainian artist Oleksandr Shatokhin’s wordless picture book, Yellow Butterfly: A Story From Ukraine (Red Comet Press, Jan. 31). A child stumbles through a stark, war-ravaged landscape in black and white, encountering barbed wire, a bomb crater, a heap of junked cars—and, throughout, a yellow butterfly that transforms into a cloud of them. The book’s backmatter offers guidance on when and how to talk about war with children. Kirkus called the book “provocative, powerful, breathtakingly beautiful.”

 An upcoming title to watch for: Don Brown’s 83 Days in Mariupol: A War Diary (Clarion/HarperCollins, May 16). A striking work of graphic nonfiction about the siege of the southeastern port city in the spring of 2022, it offers teen readers “succinct, effective storytelling combined with haunting art.” We can only hope that the war will have ended by the time it lands in bookstores.

Tom Beer is the editor-in-chief.