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Award-winning Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina was among those killed by a killer Russian Rocket attack on a popular restaurant frequented by journalists and aid workers in eastern Ukraine, PEN America said.
Amelina, 37, who turned her attention away from her literature Documenting Russia’s post-invasion war crimes, she died of her injuries after the June 27 attack on the city of Kramatorsk, Literature and Human Rights said Sunday in a statement.
Ukraine’s Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko expressed his condolences to Amelina’s family, adding that Russia bears responsibility. He said, “For every crime on our soil, for every life interrupted and for every unspoken word, a terrorist must suffer the harshest punishment.”
Amelina’s friends, colleagues, and admirers mourned her, with many saying her life was full of potential that was tragically cut short. “There are so many unwritten books, untold stories, and days not lived,” Amelina’s friend, journalist Olga Tokaryuk, wrote on Twitter.
Victoria was documenting war crimes committed by the Russians. She was killed in another such war crime. We are witnessing her death and the deaths of thousands in Ukraine,” tweeted historian Olesya Khromychuk.
At least 11 others were killed and 61 wounded in the attack around dinner time, when the restaurant was usually crowded. Ukrainian authorities arrested a man a day later, accusing him of helping Russia direct the strike.
The attack and others across Ukraine that day signaled that the Kremlin was not easing up on its bombing of the country, despite the political and military turmoil at home after a short-lived armed uprising in Russia on June 24.
In this photo provided by Ukraine’s Donetsk Regional Administration, a man stands on a street in front of the RIA Pizza store and restaurant that was destroyed by a Russian attack in Kramatorsk, Ukraine. (Ukrainian Donetsk Regional Administration via AP, file)
PEN Ukraine announced the death of Amelina after informing her family. Amelina was in Kramatorsk with a delegation of Colombian writers and journalists. She has been documenting Russian war crimes with the human rights organization Truth Hounds.
“Victoria Amelina was an acclaimed Ukrainian writer who channeled her distinguished and powerful voice into investigating and exposing war crimes following the all-out military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022,” said Polina Sadovskaya, PEN America’s Eurasia Director. “She brought a literary sensibility to her work and her elegant prose described, with forensic precision, the devastating impact of these human rights abuses on the lives of Ukrainians.”
Amelina was born on January 1, 1986 in Lviv. In 2014 she published her first novel, “November Syndrome, or Homo Compatiens”, which was nominated for the Ukrainian Valery Shevchuk Prize.
She went on to write two award-winning children’s books, Someone, or the Heart of Water and another novel, Story-e-es of Eka the Excavator. In 2017, her novel Kingdom of Doom Dreams won national and international accolades – including the UNESCO City of Literature Prize and the European Union Prize for Literature.
A popular young writer, her novels and essays have been translated into many languages, including English, Polish, Italian, German, Croatian, Dutch, Czech, and Hungarian.
In 2021 I founded New York Literature Festival, which takes place in a small town called New York in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. Since the beginning of the invasion, Amelina has dedicated herself to documenting Russian war crimes in eastern Ukraine, reports PEN America. At Kapitolivka near Izyum, I discovered the diary of Volodymyr Vakulenko, the Ukrainian writer murdered by the Russians.
In a powerful piece, Amelina describes the plight of Soviet-era minions caught in the crossfire of the 2014 Russian invasion by focusing on the sad story of Hanna, an elderly woman evacuated from the Donbass to the relative safety of western Ukraine.
Until her death, Hanna expresses a desire to go home, even after he explains to her that a Russian tank may have been parked in her garden. “I did what I could: I am a writer, and writing the truth is probably the best way to defend Hanna Park.
I could not protect anyone from the Russian artillery, so I tried to take up arms against their lies, ”Amelina writes.
She also began writing her first works of English nonfiction shortly before her death. In “Memoirs of War and Justice: Looking Back at Women Looking to War,” Amelina tells the stories of Ukrainian women gathering evidence of Russian war crimes. It is expected to be published soon, according to PEN Ukraine.
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