Ukrainian writer originally from Lviv, member of the Ukrainian PEN, war crimes documenter Victoria Amelina will be buried on Wednesday, July 5, at the Lychakiv cemetery. The community of the city sincerely sympathizes with relatives, relatives and everyone who knew Victoria Amelina.
At 3:00 p.m., the farewell and funeral service will begin in the Garrison Church of St. App. Peter and Paul (Tetralna St., 11). At 3:40 p.m., a city farewell ceremony will take place on Rynok Square. Therefore, the funeral procession will go to the Lychakiv cemetery, where the burial will take place at 4:00 p.m. Relatives of the deceased ask the media not to publish photos of the writer’s mother and son from the farewell ceremony.
We will remind, Victoria Amelina was wounded on June 27 as a result of rocket fire by the Russian occupiers of Kramatorsk. Her heart stopped on July 1 in a hospital in Dnipro due to an injury incompatible with life.
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On June 27, Viktoria Amelina, a Ukrainian writer, a member of the Ukrainian PEN and a documenter of war crimes in the Truth Hounds organization, was in Kramatorsk together with a delegation of Colombian journalists and writers. While they were having dinner at the Ria Lounge restaurant in the city center, the Russian occupiers launched a rocket attack on the building, as a result of which Victoria was seriously injured. Doctors and paramedics in Kramatorsk and Dnipro did everything they could to save her life, but unfortunately the wound was fatal. In the last days of Victoria’s life, her family and friends were by her side.
The Ukrainian PEN and Truth Hounds, based on surveys of witnesses to the tragedy, stated that the occupation by the occupiers of hitting a civilian object in a Ukrainian city was another Russian war crime. Analysis of the destruction and testimony of witnesses indicates that the Russians used a high-precision Iskander-type missile for the strike. They knew for sure that they were shooting at a place where there would be a large concentration of civilians. It is known that 13 people died, about 60 were injured.
Due to the full-scale war of Russia against Ukraine, Victoria Amelina became not only a writer. From the summer of 2022, she joined the human rights organization Truth Hounds. Together with the team, Victoria worked as a documenter of war crimes in the de-occupied territories in the east, south and north of Ukraine, in particular in Kapitolivka in the Izyum region, where she found the diary of the writer Volodymyr Vakulenko, who was killed by the Russians.
At the same time, Victoria began work on her first non-fiction book in English, War and Justice Diary: Looking at Women Looking at War, which is soon to be published abroad. In this book, Victoria talks about Ukrainian women who document war crimes and their lives during the war. The writer was also engaged in active advocacy work: she appealed to the governments of other countries to provide weapons to Ukraine, and also demanded justice and the creation of a special international tribunal for all perpetrators of Russian war crimes against Ukraine, spoke about the joint anti-colonial struggle of Ukrainians and other peoples of the world.
Victoria Amelina was born on January 1, 1986 in Lviv. During her school years, she moved to Canada with her father, but soon decided to return to Ukraine. In 2007, she received a master’s degree in computer technologies from Lviv Polytechnic University with honors. In 2005–2015, she worked in international technology companies.
In 2014, Victoria’s debut novel “The November Syndrome, or Homo Compatiens” was published. The book was included in the top ten prose publications according to the “LitAccent of the Year – 2014” award. The following year, the novel was republished, and it was shortlisted for the Valery Shevchuk Prize.
In the same year, 2015, Victoria Amelina suspended her career in information technology to devote herself to writing. In 2016, her first children’s book “Someone, or Watery Heart” was published. Her next children’s book “E-e-stories of the excavator Eka” was published in 2021. In 2017, “Stary Lev Publishing House” published Victoria’s second novel “Home for Home”. The book was shortlisted for national and international awards: “LitAccent of the Year – 2017”, UNESCO City of Literature Award, European Literature Award. The Zaporizhia Book Society named “Home for a Home” the best prose book of the year.
Viktoria Amelina’s texts were published in Polish, Czech, German, Dutch and English translations. Recently, the novel “Home for Home” was translated into Spanish.
In 2021, Victoria became the laureate of the Joseph Konrad-Kozhenovsky Literary Prize. In the same year, she founded the New York Literary Festival, which took place in the village of New York in the Bakhmut district of the Donetsk region.