‘I hope I haven’t killed anybody’: the pacifist author fighting on Ukraine’s frontline

Vlad Beliavsky dreamed that his new psychology book would help end wars. He has now spent a year in uniform, trying to catch saboteurs and fend off Russian cyber attacks

Vlad Beliavsky hoped to bring some peace to the world with his first book, The Pyramid Mind. If we all trained our minds properly, he thought, we could live together in harmony. At best, he imagined his book might even stop wars.

Today, he is in Kyiv, wearing military uniform and silhouetted against a neutral background. It is safer not to give details of where; he simply says he is in a military building. As his book is published, 13 years after it was conceived, Lieutenant Beliavsky is marking a year spent fighting for the future of Ukraine.