03 July 2023, Monday, 12:22 251

Writer Viktoriya Amelina dies in hospital after rocket attack on Kramatorsk

Editor: Roman Vaniyan

Читати українською

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The number of people killed as a result of a rocket attack by the Russian occupiers on a restaurant in Kramatorsk has increased to 13 - the writer Viktoriya Amelina died in the hospital on July 1.

This follows from a statement by the public organization PEN Ukraine.

On June 27, Viktoriya Amelina 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 Viktoriya was seriously injured.

Viktoriya Amelina is a Ukrainian writer and a member of the PEN Ukraine. Due to the full-scale war of Russia against Ukraine, in the summer of 2022, she joined the human rights organization Truth Hounds.

Amelina was born in Lviv on January 1, 1986. During her school years, she moved to Canada with her father but soon decided to return to Ukraine. In 2007, she obtained a master's degree in computer technologies at Lviv Polytechnic University with honors. From 2005 to 2015, she worked in international technology companies.

In 2014, her debut novel The Fall Syndrome, or Homo Companies, was published in the top ten prose publications according to The LitAccent of the Year award.

In 2016, her first children's book, Someone or Watery Heart, was published. Her subsequent children's book E-E-Stories Of The Excavator Eka was published in 2021. In 2017, the Stary Lev Publishing House published Viktoriya'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, and European Literature Award. The Zaporizhzhia Book Society named Home for Home the best prose book of the year.

Viktoriya 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, Viktoriya 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.

After the full-scale war, Amelina joined the human rights organization Truth Hounds; together with the team, she 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 Izium area, where she found the diary of the writer Volodymyr Vakulenko, who was killed by the Russians.

At the same time, Viktoriya started work on her first non-fiction book in English, War and Justice Diary: Looking at Women Looking at War, which will soon be published abroad. In this book, Viktoriya 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.

On Tuesday, June 27, the Russian occupying army launched a rocket attack on Kramatorsk, Donetsk Region.

One of the rockets hit a public catering establishment in one of the districts of Kramatorsk. Another rocket exploded in the territory of the settlement of Bilenke, located on the northeastern outskirts of the city.

After the search and rescue operations ended, it was known about 12 dead.

In Kramatorsk, June 30, July 1, and 2 were declared days of mourning for those who died as a result of a Russian missile attack on the city.