WAR CRIME

Celebrated Ukrainian war writer killed in Russian missile strike on restaurant

Bryan Pietsch

, Jul 04 2023

In this screen grab from video provided by Ukrainian TV Network Kontakt, award-winning Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina looks toward the camera during an interview with Uliana Hlynchak, on "Art Talk," posted in April 2021.

Prominent Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina has died of injuries sustained during a Russian missile strike on a crowded restaurant in eastern Ukraine. She was 37.

Amelina had been receiving treatment at Mechnikov Hospital in Dnipro, according to PEN Ukraine, a freedom-of-expression advocacy group, of which she was a member.

She was dining with a group of Colombian writers and journalists at a pizza restaurant in the city of Kramatorsk during the June 27 attack, PEN International said. The Colombian visitors suffered minor injuries.

The writer was known for her two novels, "Fall Syndrome" and "Dom's Dream Kingdom" – both about contemporary Ukraine – as well as for children's literature. She was awarded the Joseph Conrad Literary Award in 2021 and was a finalist for the European Union Prize for Literature in 2019.

"War and Justice Diary: Looking at Women Looking at War," an English-language nonfiction work about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is forthcoming.

"It's just hard for me to write in Ukrainian now. I only manage to do it in English, because English has always been the language I use to write in difficult times," Amelina had said in an interview published this year with Chytomo, a literary website.

"When you write in a foreign language, you get a certain distance away."

PEN Ukraine said in a statement that doctors and paramedics "did everything they could to save her life, but the injuries were fatal and incompatible with life". Her loved ones were with her during the last days of her life, it added.

Amelina's death brings the number of fatalities in the attack to 13. Dozens of others were wounded, and three children were among the dead.

The restaurant, Ria Lounge, was just a few kilometres from the front lines. It was popular with international journalists, aid workers and locals, who gathered for sushi, pizza, hookah and dance music on a terrace. But the restaurant was reduced to rubble in the attack, The Washington Post reported, with debris and metal framing strewn about and blood splattered on one of the white dining sofas.

The strike by an Iskander ballistic missile at dinnertime came amid a counteroffensive by Ukraine to recapture territory seized by Russia.

DMITRI LOVETSKY/AP
Iskander, mobile short-range ballistic missile system launchers, at the Victory Day military parade at Dvortsovaya (Palace) Square to celebrate 78 years after the victory in World War II in St. Petersburg, Russia, Tuesday, May 9, 2023.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly accused the Kremlin of intentionally striking civilian targets as a way of sowing chaos and attempting to chip away at the nation's morale. Western officials have joined Kyiv in branding many of these actions war crimes.

Amelina was a native of the western city of Lviv. She received her education partly in Canada before returning to Ukraine, where she earned a graduate degree in computer technology and joined a tech sector that was bustling before the invasion.

In 2015, she began a full-time literary career. When the war broke out, she focused her writing on the invasion and worked with Truth Hounds, an investigative group, to document alleged war crimes.

Other prominent Ukrainians who have been killed during the war include figure skater Dmytro Sharpar and ballet dancers Vadym Khlupianets and Artyom Datsishin.

Amelina had been on vacation in Egypt when the invasion began on Feb. 24, 2022. She flew to Prague with her son after civilian air travel to Ukraine was suspended. "When we landed there, I burst into tears and told my son: 'We are home,'" she told Chytomo.

She recalled that her son, whom she left in Poland before returning to Ukraine to work, said they were not yet back home.

To which she replied, "This is Europe."