In St. Michael’s Cathedral, in the heart of kyiv, many are crying, some kneeling before the remains of Victoria Amelina. This Ukrainian writer, who documented Russian war crimes, was killed in a strike on Kramatorsk. That evening, June 27, she was in this eastern city inside the popular Ria Pizza restaurant, which was hit by a Russian missile, killing 13 and injuring dozens. A week later, around 200 people, including the author’s family and her 10-year-old son, as well as many writers and journalists, gathered near her coffin, closed contrary to tradition and covered with a flag. national yellow and blue, surrounded by flowers.
“She was a real fighter for the truth, very persistent, tireless. It is a very great loss for Ukraine,” said Roman Avramenko, executive director of the NGO Truth Hounds, which deals in particular with documenting the war crimes attributed to the Russian army in Ukraine and with which Ms. Amelina collaborated. Thanks to Ms. Amelina, “the world continued to learn the truth about this war, about Russian aggression,” he said. Two Orthodox priests in white robes celebrated a religious service in the cathedral where the smell of incense was omnipresent, AFP noted. Also resounded were the kobza, sopilka and trembita, traditional instruments interpreting The Testament, a popular song which symbolizes the national awakening, and other Ukrainian melodies which accompanied the coffin in a hearse. Another ceremony is scheduled for Wednesday in Lviv, the writer’s hometown in western Ukraine, where she will be buried.
Victoria Amelina, 37 at the time of her death, died on July 1 in a hospital in Dnipro, central-eastern Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian branch of the international network PEN, which promotes Ukrainian literature and whose the writer was one of the members.
She had suffered serious injuries after the Russian strike on Kramatorsk, which took place when she was dining in the restaurant with three Colombian personalities, all three slightly injured. “We share the immense pain and express the deepest compassion to the family members, friends and colleagues of our dearest Victoria,” PEN Ukraine said. After the writer’s death, one of her poems, dedicated to Russian air attacks on Ukraine, was widely shared on social networks. “It’s as if they were taking us all to execution. But only aim for one, most often the one who is on the margins. Today is not you”, says this poem written in April 2022, two months after the start of the Russian invasion.
Victoria Amelina had a degree in computer technology. She had given up her career in this sector in 2015 to devote herself to writing. Author of novels translated into several languages and founder of a literary festival, Amelina also began documenting Russian war crimes in the liberated Ukrainian territories for the NGO Truth Hounds after the start of the war. In particular, she succeeded in finding the diary of another Ukrainian writer, Vodolymyr Vakoulenko, 50, shot dead in 2022 in the Kharkiv region (north-east) during the Russian occupation and whose body was discovered in a mass grave near Izioum.
The writer had buried his diary recounting the occupation in his parents’ garden in March 2022, hoping for the arrival of the Ukrainian army, which had finally taken over this territory six months later. “The first words I saw after opening this diary which has spent six months underground were: I believe in victory,” reported Victoria Amelina at the time.