Looking At Women Looking At War

That’s the title of the book written by the novelist, poet and human rights activist Victoria Amelina. It has the subtitle: A War and Justice Diary.

Reading it is a sobering experience. She documented the war waged by Putin’s Russia on Ukraine, photographing the ruins of civilian buildings and recording testimonies of survivors and those who eye witnessed Russian war crimes.

She became the chronicler of women such as Evhenia Zakrevska, a prominent lawyer turned soldier, and Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine, who documented tens of thousands of war crimes. The Center for Civil Liberties was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.

Victoria Amelina was only 37 when she died in the evening of the 1st of July 2023 from injuries sustained in a Russian missile attack.

The book was incomplete at the time of her death, but has been published by her editors to include her notes and field reports. The Foreword is by Margaret Atwood and contains this judgement on the war:

In this war, Russia is fighting for greed – more territory, more material resources – but Ukraine is fighting for its life; not only its life as a country, but the lives of the citizens of that country, for there is little doubt about what the outcome of a Russian win would be for Ukrainians.

The massacres, the wholesale pillaging, the rapes, the summary executions, the starvation, the child stealing, and the purges do not need to be imagined, for they have happened before. Russians claim to be the “brothers” of Ukrainians, but Ukrainians reject the kinship. Who needs a “brother” who is a homicidal psychopath and is trying to kill you?

Looking at the events, this is totally understandable but it could have been so different without Putin whipping up the psychosis. As Alexei Navalny (who identified as half Russian and half Ukrainian) said when asked whether he identified more as Russian or Ukrainian, “It was like being asked who you loved more, your mother or your father.”.

Read the book, it is a powerful document.