Justice in a Time of War
Nearly two years after she was killed by a Russian missile strike, Victoria Amelina's unflinching 320-page book of nonfiction, "Looking at Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary," is published.
By Michael Judge
It seems an eternity, but we’re just now nearing the two-year anniversary of the cowardly Russian missile strike that killed the gifted writer and TFP friend Victoria Amelina. The Ukrainian poet, novelist, essayist, and documenter of Russian war crimes was mortally wounded on June 27, 2023, in an attack on a civilian target—a popular family restaurant—in Kramatorsk, Ukraine. The mother of a young son, Victoria hung on for five days before finally succumbing to her injuries on July 1. She was 37. Twelve other civilians were also killed in the attack, including three children.
For all who knew her and her brave and beautiful work, Victoria’s death was devastating. I was fortunate to have her as an early TFP guest on Aug. 22, 2022, six months into Russia’s criminal full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The edited for print TFP version of that conversation can be read here. But the full 57-minute conversation—raw and unedited, and never before released—deserves to be heard as well. Our talk was, like everything Victoria did, brilliant yet kind; full of compassion, commitment, and a deeply held belief that good will prevail over evil, justice over cruelty, and truth over lies. Please take the time to listen to it in its entirety below. (Apologies in advance for the sound quality, but it was recorded over a cellular connection between Tokyo and Kyiv on my cheap but trustworthy handheld Philips VoiceTracer.)
Much has changed since our conversation, including an unthinkable shift in U.S. foreign policy away from supporting Ukraine and its European allies and toward a shameful capitulation with Russia. Tragically, it was later learned that the missing Ukrainian writer that Victoria and I discussed—her dear friend and fellow poet Volodymyr Vakulenko—had been executed after being taken hostage by Russian invaders. As PEN Ukraine reported, “This became public on Nov. 28, 2022, after DNA verification. His body was found in a grave in the Izium woods. According to the police, Russian occupiers shot the writer using a 9-mm Makarov pistol.”
Vakulenko’s son Vitalii, who was previously detained by Russian forces and thought missing at the time of our conversation, was later discovered alive. Miraculously, as PEN Ukraine and The Irish Times reported, after her friend’s death Victoria returned to his home and, along with his father, uncovered his war diary and final poems and fragments he had hidden in the garden before his execution.
Yet far more important than this one TFP conversation, it is crucial that we read Victoria’s writing—her poems, stories, novels, essays, and newly released 320-page nonfiction masterpiece, Looking at Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary. Completed just days before her death and published on Feb. 18 by St. Martin’s Press, The New York Times has hailed it as “Remarkable [and] powerful, eloquently testifying to the horrific consequences of this conflict.” Above all, we must continue to read Victoria—and all Ukrainian writers who have perished in the past horrific three years—because, as she so rightly said of her friend and fellow poet Volodymyr Vakulenko, “A writer remains alive as long as he has one reader.”
When I spoke to Victoria from Tokyo at her home in Kyiv in August 2022, she’d just finished traveling to the war-torn cities of Kharkiv and Kryvyi Rih to document the work of the brave Ukrainians recording Russian war crimes there. She’d been volunteering with the Kyiv-based organization Truth Hounds to document atrocities since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. It was a Monday morning, two days before Ukraine’s Aug. 24 Independence Day. Air-raid sirens began wailing in the background. “The Russians are especially angry with us right now,” she said. When I asked if she needed to go to a safe place, she replied, “I’m OK,” hardly missing a beat, as she moved into a corridor, away from exterior walls and windows, and continued explaining why she refused to live as “a refugee” in her own country or any other, and why the Russian aggressors must be held accountable for their crimes.
In honor of Victoria Amelina’s life and work, Nothing Bad Has Ever Happened: A Bouquet for Victoria Amelina is available for free as a PDF and at-cost ($4.82) as a paperback. Click here to order from Arrowsmith Press.
Click here for more information about Truth Hounds, the Kyiv-based nonprofit that since 2014 has been documenting and investigating international crimes and other serious human-rights violations committed during the armed conflicts in Ukraine and other regions of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.
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Wow wow wow! Loved the audio interview!
Beautiful.