‘She was standing up for Ukrainian culture’: tributes paid to writer killed in Russian strike

Tributes have been paid by Irish cultural and Ukrainian support groups to the writer and investigator of Russian war crimes Victoria Amelina, who has died of the injuries she received in last week’s missile attack on a restaurant in the city of Kramatorsk.

The 37-year-old is the 13th person to die as a result of the attack which the Ukrainian branch of the international writers’ organisation, Pen, has described as a war crime.

Ms Amelina had close links to Pen Ireland, which promoted an event that she spoke at in Smock Alley in Dublin last October entitled Nothing Bad Has Ever Happened. During the same visit she did a storytelling event for children at Pearse Street library.

She was due to return to address the organisation’s conference later this year and had also appeared at Vicar Street in April, when she participated in a fundraiser for the Red Cross organised by Fighting Words and Ukrainian Action Ireland.

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On Monday, Pen Ireland described Ms Amelina as “a dear friend and much loved colleague”. Former chair Lia Mills, who came to know her well after meeting her while Ms Amelina was in Ireland to help a displaced Ukrainian friend settle here, said: “She had a way of bringing light into any conversation. She had a very serious message but she delivered it in a very low key way. And she was very good craic.

“Everything was about Ukraine and trying to hold Russia to account. This is a horrible day and it’s heartbreaking to think of it being multiplied daily for the people of Ukraine.”

On social media, Pen Ireland said it joined Pen centres all over the world in mourning her loss. “She was a light in the darkness, a seeker of truth and justice. We are heartbroken by this news.”

Seán Love of Fighting Words described news of her death as “horrendous”. “She was spellbinding and a lovely, lovely woman,” he said.

“She was an exceptionally brilliant writer but, as she explained when she spoke in Vicar Street, she had almost entirely stopped writing so as to document Russian war crimes.

“She was standing up for Ukrainian culture, which she rightly believed Russia was trying to destroy. It is terrible news.”

Others who had spoken with her around her trips to Ireland noted her optimism and humour even when speaking about “very dark subjects”.

In a pinned tweet on her own account, Ms Amelina said: “I’m a Ukrainian writer. I have portraits of great Ukrainian poets on my bag. I look like I should be taking pictures of books, art, and my little son. But I document Russia’s war crimes and listen to the sound of shelling, not poems. Why?”

[ Victoria Amelina: Nothing bad has ever happened: a tale of two genocides, the Holocaust and the Holodomor ]

The Ukrainian Community in Ireland organisation said “Victoria was a talented writer but also a wonderful person. She helped many people evacuate to safety from war-torn areas. Some of the people she saved are here in Ireland now.”

Like Ukrainian Action Ireland, the organisation described the attack on the Pia Pizza restaurant as a war crime and said it should be punished. Ms Amelina had been there with a group of visiting Colombian journalists.

The British academic, lawyer and author Phillippe Sands, who had written about his own family connections to Lviv and knew Ms Melina, said her death “deprives Lviv, Ukraine and the world of an outstanding writer, an individual who reflected the best of modern Ukraine – humour, tenacity and warmth, coupled with a brilliantly open spirit and a courageous soul”.

“Her life was emblematic of remarkable Lviv, her death is emblematic of a merciless and terrible war, prosecuted by men who feel no compunction acting in manifest violation of the most basic precepts of humanity.”

Ms Amelina was born in Lviv on January 1st, 1986. In 2014 she published her first novel, The November Syndrome, or Homo Compatiens, which was shortlisted for the Ukrainian Valeriy Shevchuk Prize.

She went on to write two prize-winning children’s books, Somebody, or Waterheart, and Storie-e-es of Eka the Excavator.

In 2017, her novel Dom’s Dream Kingdom received a raft of national and international accolades – including the Unesco City of Literature Prize and the European Union Prize for Literature.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, she had devoted herself to documenting Russian war crimes in eastern Ukraine.

In Kapytolivka near Izyum, she discovered the diary of Volodymyr Vakulenko, a Ukrainian writer killed by the Russians.

[ Uncovering the buried diary of an executed Ukrainian writer ]

She also began working on her first work of English non-fiction shortly before her death.

In War And Justice Diary: Looking At Women Looking At War, which is expected to be published soon, she recounts stories of Ukrainian women collecting evidence of Russian war crimes. – Additional reporting AP