I was very impressed with the youth, energy and intelligence of Victoria Amelina, whom I met during the few busy days I spent in Istanbul in October 2022. Lviv Book Forum. From Hay Festival we decided to support this festival digitally, connecting Ukrainian writers with writers from all over the world and audiences everywhere in digital form, but a few international war writers and journalists knowledgeable about the region decided to go to Lviv. Meeting their Ukrainian colleagues in person adds another dimension to the festival.
it was the days intense conversations and making friends Big projects emerged that took shape faster than ever before due to context and need. There we met Victoria Amelina, Diana Berg, Volodymyr Yermolenko or Nataliya Gumenyuk and Jon Lee Anderson, Misha Glenny, British journalists Emma Graham Harrison and Charlotte Higgins, among others, the latter has since decided to learn Ukrainian and report on cultural issues. or the neurosurgeon Henry Marsh and, as a result of this visit, doctor Rachel Clarke, who founded the NGO ‘Hospice of Ukraine’, dedicated to supporting healthcare professionals in Ukraine to provide dignified and palliative care to all who need it at the end of their lives.
Victoria participated in a discussion about women and war with Janine de Giovanni and Lydia Cacho. I remember your words i was hoping for this Ukraine i would win this warbecause Ukraine, unlike Russia, is a liberal democracy, and this meant, among other things: women played a very important role in society and according to him this is one of the decisive factors for victory. He then told us about his book in progress’Diary of the injustices of war: looking at the women who look at war‘. The first profile was: Evgenia ZakrevskaHe was and still is a lawyer who fought for justice for the victims killed during the Pride Revolution in 2014.
At another table with lawyer and author Philippe Sands, he commented that this is very important. establishing international courts for the crime of aggressionand that the Russian leaders were punished for this war. For this he tirelessly documented all these war crimesfor the future of your country.
I saw it again in ours There is a Festival in Cartagena de IndiaIn January 2023, we invited her to speak with Oleksandra Matviichuk, director of Civil Liberties at the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization with whom Andrei Kurkov and Victoria also collaborate, about her work and activism.
One night there, in the walls of Cartagena, he, Sofia Cheliak, programming director of LvivBookforum, and I talked. How can festivals of literature and ideas be re-established in a future Ukraine?. Victoria had created the New York Literary Festival a few years ago, held in a town called New York in Ukraine’s Bakhmut region. A month later, he sent me a photo of the festival venue, which was completely destroyed by the Russian attacks, via WhatsApp with the text “I know better than anyone that you can understand how I feel today”.
At a dinner coinciding with the London Book Fair, we made plans to promote his latest publication in Spanish.A house for Dom‘. We also talked at length about his work.o Russia’s War Crimes Field Investigator In the liberated lands of eastern, southern and northern Ukraine, including Kapitolivka near Izium the author found the diary of Volodymyr VakulenkoHe was killed and published by the Russians and became another document of Russian war crimes.
be part of the fear
On June 27, 2023, Russia committed another war crime. Send a high-precision Iskander missile to the Ria Lounge restaurant in Kramatorsk, a city in eastern Ukraine. His colleagues at longtime collaborator Truth Hounds, an NGO documenting war crimes, interviewed eyewitnesses of the attack and said: there were no military objects that could be legal targets For that day’s attack. They also confirmed that it was an ordinary day at one of the city’s most popular restaurants: as many as 40 people, divided into small groups, ate. The Truth Hounds investigators find that foreigners whom Russian propaganda calls mercenariesThey were actually volunteers and journalists.
Among them was the Colombian peace commissioner.Sergio Jaramillostarted its support campaign from Latin America, hold on to ukraineColombian writer Héctor Abad and journalist Catalina Gómez, who has been covering the Russian occupation of Ukraine since its inception for France 24 and escorted the critically injured Victoria Amelina to the hospital in an evacuation ambulance.
Victory He became part of one of the war crimes he tirelessly documented.
It was beautiful inside and out but she took that very lightly. its up to uskeep documenting, keep reporting To make Ukraine a country where writers and the general public can meet without fear to imagine other possible worlds at a festival like New York City but in Ukraine’s Bakhmut region. Victoria Amelina, rest in peace.