so i think that is the next step, like creating these mechanism to actually making sure that when these crimes happen in the future, it gets more and more difficult. i think we've taking a step towards that. i think it's very clear to anyone listening to this the difference between education, persuasion, which legitimate things and in democracy and what we're indoctrination. maybe it needs a new word, but the elements we've through deportations spilling from family dehumanization, murder, clearly this is not normal. education is something very different. we have to fight with every lever possible to stop it. thank you very muchmy name is c. i'm chief correspondent of the sunday times and i'm based on

its i'm terribly sad to be chairing this panel in memory of victoria molina, the poet, novelist and, essayist and friend. to me and so many of you here today. i'm honored because crazy ukrainians are the only people earth to hold book festival us in war and because bravely risking your lives for the rest of us in europe. i'm honored to because. victoria was one of the most amazing women i've ever met and. i was lucky enough to have counted her as a friend. i was introduced to her through her agent, emma shurtleff, who's a close friend of mine. and i'm cece. sad because victoria, as you know, is not here today. indeed. the reason that i'm here is i last saw her in late june. we had supper in her high rise apartment overlooking kiev. we had white and food and she at

that supper invited me to come here. and we talked about doing a panel together and how she was going to show her favorite places this her home town. instead as know on july the first aged just 37, she died after being fatally wounded. the russian attack on a pizza source which killed than a dozen people, including four children. i think this is going to be a very emotional event, but i don't want to be sad because i think is very much here in spirit. in fact, she founded her own literary festival in the small town of new york, donetsk. and this is a panel on an issue which she cared so much, was writing a book about, women looking at war. i've been a war correspondent for 35 years. i actually off covering the soviet occupation of afghanistan when i was just 21. so reporting here in ukraine, on

another russian invasion feels a full circle in some ways. and perhaps because i am a female war correspondent and when i started, we were few. i've always focused on what happens to. women in war. i am much less interested in what we often call the bang bang a more and how people behind the lines educate, protect children and elderly. as all hell is breaking loose them and those course are usually the women. to me they are the real heroes of war. even if you don't find any statues to them, i'm absolutely delighted. have with me today a panel of fabulous women. we here in person tetyana teren the executive director of pen ukraine and i'm also very grateful for last minute step in sofia cheliak who is well known

to you perhaps as the director of the festival and, has been avoiding taking part itself. but sadly, last minute, larissa denish and co was unable to join us because of family illness. we also have joining virtually amazing lawyer and human rights activist winner. but first, ukraine to win the nobel peace prize. oleksandra matviichuk, the head of center for civil liberties. so before we our discussion, i'm going to ask tatiana to read one of victoria's poems and then we'll have a minute of silence to remember victoria and all ukrainian that have been killed in this war. christina but i thank you very much. christina it's great delight of mine to be here to see all of

you in this audience, especially to see the faces of people for whom victoria was a close and dear person. and i would like start by saying that it's still very difficult and poignant to be talking about victoria without her especially in her native, the talent that was so dear, close to her and especially within the festival that she was so closely affiliated with. so for me personally, this is the first event devoted victoria and it's a moment overflowing with anguish and pain. it's great honor for me to be here, to be her voice. i'm very grateful to kristina for the opportune city to recite her poem. will be also my first experience of recital a poem by victoria and melina. and i'm really hopeful we will read out together of this poem

entitled to a story for return. when mira left home, she took a bit from a box. when tim left the city, he picked up a stone on a street. when he left the garden, she picked up a stone from an apricot. when vera left the home, she didn't take anything. i will be back soon. i will be back shortly, said. and she didn't take. a single thing with her. mira is basically building a new home out of this bit. tim established it in new city, a city resembling her native one, raqqa planted the stone at apricot. and there's exciting blossoming around the stone in vera, who didn't take anything, is telling this story. when you are fleeing your home, she says, the house behind, your

back is getting smaller. smaller. it's turning into a small beat a stone up to last year's apricot or a fragment of glass that protects you a shell from the crimea, a up there, combat gear. and then can fit your home into pocket. and it's asleep there. but then you want take it out from your pocket in a safe place when it's ready in this home will be growing slowly and gradually and. remember that you will never be without your home. what did you take with you? i just took this story, this story about return. and here it is that i took it out into the light and is growing. this poem was written on the 8th of may 20, 22, and i'm not really sure whether we will be talking today about, victoria as a poet is because the of our

discussion is much broader. but i would like to remind all of you that victoria started writing poems she basically became poet is at the beginning of the full scale russia ukraine war and we will be talking extensively about her role in the documentation and of war crimes. so the focus will be on her as the documentary and a lot you might remember that she talked a lot not being a poet that it's not really poetry. this is the language that if i don't hit, that's what she said. but for me, person this is documentary poetry and it was paramount. and for victoria to document a wide array of emotions, emotions, not something that we experienced outwardly, not by dint, chronicles or news and development. it was very important for her document, the inner states, whatever experienced inwardly. so as a poet she was also a

document of our wartime reality. and as christina referenced, i really that we all who gathered here in memoriam on victoria to commemorate raped her and commemorate all the artists who died as part of this war. let's do it by sound. a minute of silence. symbolic. thank you, everyone. thank you to each other, you and

victoria at work. close friends. can you tell us how you knew her and give a little sense of her. yeah, i. your former record, i think that each and every one of us in new victoria in different capacities in different and in our personal lives. victoria was present as a professional, so we would bump into each other from time to time. she was also part and parcel of my personal life, i have already alluded that it be very difficult for all of to be talking about her. it will be a tough experience because. sophie, alexandra and i participated in scores of joint events in. i would like to point out that i loved participating in events with victoria or to be part of the elaborate of projects to

work in tandem with. her sometimes i be speaker, she would be a moderator or vice versa. it was always a very interesting and stimulating. it was all about i took pride in her. i was fascinated by her the way she spoke about any topic that she was well versed in. it was professional and friendly fascination and i'm overflowing with this emotion again. how should i speak at her event? because this is her event, but she's not physically present here. so how do we talk at her event? her i would like to talk about a personal dimension, not a professional one for me personally, victoria was a person who was excellent in supporting others, in lending a helping hand. why is it still so difficult for me to be here in life? i remember the first weeks at the full scale invasion, march 2022. these are weeks that i spent in libya even, and i spent that in

victoria's apartment. we had a multitude of conversations. we spent so many evenings and nights together and i was jealous because she was not spending the time with me. well, it was not just about me and i was jealous as well, to be honest, because she spent very little time with all of us. this is something that you should know. i'm pretty much sure that we will refer a lot of victoria's jokes because this is something that will be really helpful in this talk. but it was never enough of her because. she was always elsewhere. she was in volunteer warehouses. she was going to railway to pick someone up where she would take people to the border. she picked up animals and pets and she would adults and children alike to her apartment. and from time to time, we some pets like three cats and two dogs. and so it never enough of her. but i'm still very grateful to

the feed to life that. we had this unique opportunity to share some time together and it an important stretch in her life. inside she was trying to make a decision on what to do next under the circumstances basically during that period in her life she was trying to find her new role and this is something we will veer back to. but this the time when i saw for the first time firsthand how she was supportive of others and she always that it was not sufficient sometimes she slept for only 3 to 4 hours or she didn't really sleep a but still she was positive it was not enough. when i'm thinking about her, i have an image of a person who. always knew who to call, who text it, when to do that. she knew when it was important she'd tell someone, i'm here next by you, by your side. and this is something that i can still, tangibly and viscerally feel. there's another personal aspect about her for and she was a

motivator and an energizer for me she was very generous. she had a very understanding of how culture operates and how important it was to go outside of your culture and work externally. she was always very generous in sharing her ideas and initiatives, sometimes that she was often hand or like the recipient. yes, i know that you are busy doing with something doing something else, but i have this idea about a festival of a big. so let's do this then we will do that. and so was this amazing mystical nature in whatever is happening even now when victoria is not here, there are still people call me by happenstance or bump into each other and they tell me, you know what? we had conversation with victoria and she intended to create this website or she had an idea of going somewhere and

supporting a specific person. so these stories keep flooding in and i'm really lacking in her motivational energy, but oozed from her travel. but still, i can feel this immense motivation from her and the great support that she was for me she was also great ambassador for ukrainian literature and talking about a lot overseas. sophie, you and i spoke just after death and i know that you have very close to her perhaps. you could talk a little bit about your relationship with her, actually because of him a lot. this just when we had died, i got a call from a friend sometime late, very, very shortly. and he was trying to support me in this call. but he kept repeating this phrase of this great loss for ukraine. oh, ukraine has lost so much and the world has lost so much.

and it was -- by this. i'm so angry about this talk of like the loss of because something great or something, you know, she was like living. she was a person. she was fun. she funny. she was my friend. she was for me the big to me the biggest loss is the loss of someone who's supposed to stand up there on a pedestal, someone who becomes a symbol of something, even though she is now clearly turning into a symbol, it is the loss of some who is near and dear to you. this is a personal loss and a different level of perception with the vehicle. yes, i had this kind of relationship for i was like a bad friend. i was i was i was the friend you could have fun with, you could drink wine, you could go for a walk you could or you could say, sorry, could skip family dinners. i that kind of friend. so of course i would confide in her she would confide with me what did we do with this this or that particular situation is one we're talking about more global levels or know motherland.

but on a personal level we just love to have fun. we and it was very interesting because i had to i had to because there was one vehicle sitting up on the stage whose has this perfect articulation documentation. i still quote one of her answers when someone asked her, is it feminist of women to join the war and become becoming one of the tools of the patriarchy? to which erica said, look, ukrainian women are defending themselves. it's entirely it's an entirely perspective, a reflection re response to defend what you love and. but on the other hand, there was a vehicle who would come to my place with whom we might we might gossip, we might have some wine we might discuss. i don't know, two trips, visit visits to a cosmetologist or makeup person, you know, and

there's this private level. you can't really share it very much. you know, managed to write one text about vk and the text was still more about, you know, many people now are proving are arguing and calling vika a representative of executed. she was very, very wary, actually that they would start calling our generation renaissance and there was a very important line for me to pull to pull the line from her to the 92 to the 15th of the 1970s, who later suffered and either died, lost lives or were in the camps. we had personal and creative connection with that generation, but a text about her as a person, the text about our personal relationship, i don't think i will ever write because this is something that i won't able to talk publicly. but if we talk about the festival and the forum, last year we had one of the biggest number of events as a

participant, she had this conversation, philip sands, in which she was talking about where they were discussing. can russia's be qualified as genocide and this was a very difficult conversation because understand that from the point of view of international law, perhaps there's not enough proof. it was important that. what is called is name. what is happening is named that things are called by their names and the conversation with philip ended up it ended up being a pretty good conversation they found some point of point of connection and. we knew how to keep working on this topic and on war crimes. and most importantly, i want to add another thing, so i'm just kind of jumping all over the place and, getting ahead of myself, but it was very important for me to be at this children's camp for kids from the donetsk region. these are children named, mira, team mira and team i met, him who took took out the stone in

tears when. he was evacuated just as a little stone. he in mariupol. so this was the kind of the last trip last trip to the seaside was just before the full scale was before the scale invasion. so his last trip to the sea, to the full scale mission, was to mariupol and vika was working. so you just end also for these children's future. she was working toward the future of the night. she had her own festival. right dad called to talk about the real names and become the heart to the literary heart of donetsk. and we can't avoid about that now as well. thank you. i'm going to turn over to alexandra now. if she's and think, oleksandr, you got to know victoria more recently, perhaps you could just tell us a little bit about your interact with her. she i first met at a birthday of

a common friend well kind of that happens and the smaller but so who was not prior to that i was i had little awareness or little opportunity interact with her but we became friends and our first this advocacy trip i started this race as this very spontaneous trip. vika wrote me in some, but she said she was writing a book about women documenting the war and she wanted to spend some time with me so that we can see the how and why and what our team is doing and that she's ready. she's prepared to do everything, make yourself useful rather than just, you know, be there. and i said, i told her that, look, i'm leaving to on one of these advocacy related trips and two days join us, if you like. and to my surprise, she immediately immediately jumped in and. i thank fate to this day that that it brought us together and that we were together on this

trip because it was very difficult tour through several countries. this was early summer last year. we're talking about, but this is our first conversation about the need for a special tribunal of the of aggression. we're meeting different officials various public events in belgium, france and i and in britain and yeah, i've just kind of i just have this very vivid memory when as we were walking completely, spent just so tired that can't even talk to each other. and after this of experience, this joint and this joint experience. yeah, one of your i have it is an honor to me to call vika, my friend and. yes, it is truly very difficult to talk about her and probably need it. it's not necessary to talk about her as of a thing of the past. she's a great person, of great

generosity of great of a very generous giver. and there's much to hold on too much to think, to think back on and much to share with when she when she passed on, when she left us. i. i devoured everything was written about her. you know, facebook posts, recollections, thoughts, reflections, articles that were published to discuss very those those parts of her life that i had not been invited to, that i had not known a life in which we had not existed. and increasingly understood the sort of wonderful person are is and it seems to me that for me the greatest thing we as friends and people who loved her can do is to do take all of the things

that she started in her very rich life and make sure these things can go on, continue. thank you. i remember the photo victoria posted on twitter. i refused to call it x where she's carrying bag and she's wearing body armor and there's destruction all around her. she wrote, i am a ukrainian writer. i have portraits of great ukrainian poet. so my bag, i look like i should be taking of books. ah, so my son. but i document war crimes and to the sound of shelling, not so when the full scale invasion starts, it's victories know set aside fiction writing and trained as a war crimes with the human group truth hounds and started traveling to areas liberated from the russian occupation and recording the testimonies of witnesses and

survivors. so i wanted to ask each you how the full scale invasion changed your work, what you do differently now she perhaps i'll start. i'll go back to you, alexander, because i the even before the war you gave up your dream of becoming a theater director, and instead you did a law degree and became the mfa influential human rights defender that you are today. you're managing not the chance, but to me the war started in february 13. i was then a coordinator of the euromaidan s.o.s. initiative that was a response to the brutal crackdown on the peaceful student demonstration. and we got several thousand people together over the country. we were working on essentially on no sleep. that's when over these months of

protests, we had hundreds of people go through, us who had been beaten, arrested, tortured or accused in fabricated show, show cases, criminal. so when the russian invasion started, with the start of the so-called green men in the crimean peninsula, it very natural and simple for us form mobile groups to them there and to send those groups there. we sent mobile groups to luhansk for donetsk region and how suddenly it's not just the war that began but this. but our work in documenting these very scary stories from people who ended up in russian captivity. i personally over 100 survivors of this captivity. and these are stories about beatings, rape, about them, being put in wooden boxes, about their limbs being cut off, about

current being sent, their genitals electrical and all of the things that have been going on for eight years and, you know, when february fourth, 2022 came all this evil multiplied and expanded all over the country. and i started asking myself, who are we doing this for? why are we documenting? who are we doing this for? in our initiative tribunal for for putin, which we formed with our partners and did dozens of regional organizations covering, the entire country with a network of local collective documents. we have over 52,000 episodes of international war crimes. and as a lawyer, understand that we're facing a gap of responsibility because a there no court that could possibly try putin for the crime of aggression. but secondly this amount of crimes also during a war cannot

be efficiently investigated even the best legal system in the world. well which ukraine is clearly not so therefore it's no surprise that since the start of the full scale invasion that our team faced an additional task. our goal we don't want to document all these crimes purely for national archives. as much as i respect the work of it's very important to recover the true picture of what happened but we are advocate and men and women. we were doing this for justice and so my own i spent a lot of my own personal time create an international mechanism rooms for accountability. but developing the kind of strategy, justice and kind of architecture of justice to ensure justice that person in ukraine who has who has suffered from russian gets a chance against a shot at justice

regardless who the person is, their social standing is the type of crime they were a victim of. what type of violence they experienced, whether international organizations care about their fate or not, or trashy media care about her fate or not every survivor, every affected person has to get shot at justice. because if we say every life matters, then we have to make it. we have to turn it into our practice and. we in victoria, we're working towards that. she was a powerful international voice bringing together these two in her personality, brought together these two strands of writer, documentarian, like nobody else, like nobody else. she could find the words the afterwards to the horror that millions of people in ukraine were going through. and our thirst for justice. you the war crimes victory

investigated included murder of fellow writers as vladimir after killing his occupation diaries victoria discovered buried in his family's garden and helped to have published it. and we hear from in a later session with tatiana but tatiana, i'd like to ask you what you do. you'll very much at the intersection of culture, media and the role of women. perhaps you could talk about how this is a war on too, and what kind of work, how your work has changed to a result of the war. yeah, most of the girls. i will use this as a jumping off point. this this is the twitter that christina mentioned this twitter post because it was my actually, my, my photograph of victoria. i took it in sort of car in kharkiv and early june 20, 22.

and i am also i will always be very grateful to victoria for finding the words and knowing how important it is how important kharkiv for me and how painful it was for me in the earliest months, how all of the news from kharkiv as she very delicately and very very clearly very aptly told if you decide to go i'm going with to kharkiv and that's when we went not only with victoria but also with our stops levinsky and we'll get them all and tighten our cover. and this was our first little area information volunteer trip to these front conflict line adjacent territories, the occupied territories at that. since then we've had 15 such trips. but again here was always this very thin and very apt, very timely motivation from victoria. let's try to do this and i will

also recall this moment, this moment am sure that this moment also was also important her when she having seen what we saw in kharkiv when we saw assaultive car and this was like a week since it since get going there was even allowed and we saw these families who had first returned to pick up some things when we first saw these destroyed buildings. i think this is what determined for us all and what we would do next, because these volunteer trips is one of our main priorities, priorities at the moment. we want it as a as a you know, a community of people adjacent to culture, literary media. we want to know better what's going on in various corners of ukraine. we really want to be with our people. and i think this was also the kind of moment when shortly after this, victoria wrote to alex, sandra, shortly after this

victoria met to ruth simmons and she decided, this is what i'm going to do, going to document russian war crimes and as far as i'm concerned, what changed for me? what changed for the organization where i work, the ukrainian, i would have to say prior to 2022 after well, since 2014, between 2014 and 2022. so from the start, russia's war until the full scale invasion, then we were focused in terms of advocacy. we were focused on the ukrainian of crimea after the kremlin, the writers and journalists imprisoned in russia we were cooperating a lot with alexander the center for civil liberties and job. there was to bring tools of culture and tools of the media into this important bring bring them to bear on important advocacy work. we would translate books we would publish published books. we would organize campaigns. and after february 24th, we realized that, first of all,

this is definitely not enough and probably we have to find role for ourselves in documenting this. and documenting russia's crimes precisely in the field of culture and media and since since late february started our monitoring of the crimes and losses in media and culture, in the spheres of culture media. and we started preparing our reports, newsletters in english and other languages to constant inform the international community, cultural and media community on what's going on. ukraine we started organizing street street photo, photographic exhibition and events dedicated to the fallen, and we at some point we also understood that documenting the document of the crimes is not enough. and we see it as our job today, as writers, as journalists and cultural managers. we really want books that our

losses are not simply for our losses, not to simply into a statistic, so that we don't simply about how many people died. so they don't simply talk about losses as sophia said. so we find ways to continue the causes and these testaments left behind by these people. so the most important job for is to find the opportunity to tell the stories of all our fallen artists and to find the opportunity to continue their work through the voices of their families, their friends and colleagues we're thinking and working on publishing books with these stories in, ukrainian and english, but the same time each of us remembers what is that many of these people started very important cultural initiatives or media initiatives. and sophie. sophie has already mentioned new york literary festival, right in

the little town new york and that list. but thanks thanks to her colleagues from this ukrainian york. this festival, by the way, is ongoing. it's carrying on. sophia will tell us more about that. but this is very important. and all these have left important causes for us to champion and continue to and complete. we've mentioned vladimir and quite rightly, kristie. and this is an important christina already both american countries an important cause that passed on to us. but you i don't want to talk about just about numbers today, but i think it's important to say that only since february 2020 to thanks to russia's genocidal war over 70 ukrainian artists have died. and today we remember victoria. in a few hours we'll be talking here about vladimir putin. but there are many, many more such. and this is our great duty to tell stories, to find opportunities to continue their causes, their festivals, their

that perhaps they have the time to publish. it is our job to collect this text, to publish them and to find opportunities to continue and extend their stories. let them persist, continue to be their voice. thank you. i want to move on the conversation a little to the role of women? there are plenty of women on the front line here. i've interviewed some of them and i heard the amazing irina yesterday i think around 20% if you're armed forces are women. yeah. at the start of that war, there not even uniform for women. women on the front lines were having wear men's uniforms and ties around the waist to, make them fit to roll up arms. we are, after all, rather different body shapes. what does it say that even in 2023, it seems that men's needs are still the forefront?

and i wonder if you think the war in ukraine will change? see the role of how women are perceived. and yet we have chosen to give, which hasn't. so, says tanya. thank you very much for this question. and it was in my plans to tell you a little bit about how the war changed my life. and i wanted to go back to the pre-war time. you know, when everyone could feel that something was coming at a very basic cultural manager, some other women decided to create a chat and the official reason for creating this chat was as follows it was just like the last days of i had an ism in lviv. it was a chat for people who wanted to have fun. it was several weeks before the beginning of the full scale invasion. those were quickly days because we wanted to make it to all the parties as if it were the last days of our life and. that's the way we organized these parties.

because i was not part of this chat because she wanted where she was going to go to egypt and then the full scale invasion begin and women in this chat had a certain number of reserved apartments. we had of dwellings in even areas to people. and this chat for entertainment and fun turned into a chat where we quite needed evacuation in lviv, according diverse data we had in between wanted 2 million people in lviv, mostly elderly people, women, children and pets. and we did everything within our capacity to cater for the needs of these people in. i remember that i woke up morning, my friend was staying with me and she woke me up at 6:00 in the morning on the 24th of february and the city council that they would test the public

announcement or the public alert system that morning. she wakes me up, i jump onto my feet and she says, well, an air raid alert, do not get scared. and i was infuriated because i hated when people wake me up like that in the morning. it sucks. so i'm trying grope for my phone in the municipality and. i wanted to tell them with fury, you know what? you do not have an alert system it 6:00 in the morning and then my colleague my friend tells me sophie, the war has begun. so go to the chad. and then in one hour i receive a message. and because we got stuck in egypt, we are stranded here. do we do? and that's how our story would we get started. and as of this story, during the last years, a forum, we established contacts with the women veterans initiative, this is basically an organization was established to lend helping hand to women and providing them with whatever they needed.

but at the same time they are also fighting or standing up for equality in the ukrainian army before 2019, officially women were not allowed to have combat so they could cook, they could make clothes they could have some other real in positions, but they were not allowed to engage in combat activities or missions. and the women veteran movement launched this initiative at the beginning the war because most of their female members some combat experience or work related experience, some of them stayed behind to help women like to look for female voice like for example they are raising funds right now to purchase some female winter boots because they don't want to female female combatants to wear tennis shoes, for example. so we can see that the role of women, the ukrainian army is changing. and emily rating there are still

a lot of question marks. a lot of women are fighting for the right to hold combat positions because we have only 5000 women on the frontlines in combat missions. and these are the women that fought really hard for those. right and in privilege. and that's what we did. she contributed a lot to the women's veterans movement and she lent to helping to female combatants, you know, that kind of stuff. we really would be able to join a she's a lawyer. and right now she is a female combatant of ukraine's armed forces. unfortunately, she was not able to join my point is that this was really important for at the beginning of the full scale invasion could see that this sisterhood system is effective, that it does work by dint of women in different capacities and positions. there's progress in the positive

direction. so some of them are finding rescue while want to on the frontlines but back then multiple ties and bonds were forged and this is something that became a bulwark for our continued fight. it was essential for us to capture these stories. she wanted to demonstrate how the situation was changing inside the country that women were not really afraid to shoulder responsibility. it sort of changed. the switch flipped and i remember that because it was back from egypt and she was even joking about hopping on mustard gas to make it back to ukraine. and so she's back from egypt. and she asked me, what do i do? i remember that back then i was inundated with work, but because i was volunteering, i was engaging evacuation, humanitarian aid. i had to juggle a lot of balls

in the air. i work for ospina kultura tv channel. at a certain point i started broadcasting live with news on the other hand, there was the ukrainian book institute and the book forum, and when asked me, what should we do? i was like, i don't know. i have no clue. there were so things on my plate that i was little bit lost. i couldn't really delegate most these tasks and then becca, rachel, engaging different activity. she started clearing around to have the items in warehouse or she goes to kiev, then kiev region, kharkiv region. we tried to coordinate and sync our activities in. i have one point in delegate imprinted in my mind that was the point when she decided to document what on behalf of the ukrainian book institute, i invited her to a festival. sweden shows she was a speaker on the agenda and to the best of

my memory was like two weeks before the last bookworm. so she was a speaker. the agenda. and then i receive text message from her. the kharkiv region was occupied day. i was hired, so i will go there and start documenting war crimes. i was really happy for her because it was also my dream in. i responded to vika do it for the two of us and during that trip we found the diary vladimir mark horton go and it became a priority for her. thank you as you said, sophie, is where it was really to fight for justice. and i talked at the about women to me being heroes it was but it's also a dark side of what happens to in war and that's the use rape and sexual violence as we saw so graphically after the liberation of butcher and pen. so this is an issue very close to my heart. she wrote a book about rape in war, which will come out in

ukrainian later this year. but i wanted aleksandar, if you could, perhaps about this, because the reason wrote this book was because i was so angry at the lack of justice for rape is the world's most neglected war crime. the international criminal court in the last 20 years is only successfully managed to convict two people for rape in war. and somehow i often looked at as a kind of side issue, not as serious as the killing and torture. so you spoke passionately about the importance of bringing people justice. but but how can you actually do this? and how can you do it while a war is is underway? i can't think of any other example where. a country has started to try and this while fighting is still going on the alternative. i would like say three things in

response, this difficult question. well, first of all, i worked with people who experience against sexual abuse. this is something that i've been doing since 2014. and i fully with you that it's one up there most, cover it or hushed down crimes that. i remember that i conversed with a person was kept in a basement together with a bunch other people and this person told me that there was regular raping raping. and then i had an interview with this person who and i heard some really scary in graphic details and nuances of torture but this interviewee didn't really didn't even say a single about sexual abuse and eventually after the

24th of february when we started building and expanding the network of documentaries investigators in different regions of ukraine. i was very cautious about this type of crime. i realized that it requires special preparation i mean, if you wanted to collect testimonies like that because of course, the focus on not retraumatizing or the survivors and i knew based on my experience that it was important to continue living on. and you still wanted to be able to in doubt yourselves in lives little pleasures, despite the horrendous experience. so during the first weeks of the invasion our volunteers did not really look for such stories, but still we would receive contacts of people who were ready to share their but at the beginning of the war we transfer

these contacts details to specialized institutions, organizations and for me back then it a testament to the scale and scope of this crime. but i mean, it's one up the most at crimes and we do not intentionally look the survivors of crimes but they still find us i mean it speaks speaks volumes about the scale and the scope of sexual abuse that the russian military subjected. our people to in the occupied territories. there's another point that would like to make about this very type of crime. it has a very peculiar nature because it basically, by targeting specific people, the occupy can impinge the entire community. how does it work? so people who survived sexual

abuse are suffering a sense of guilt? very often it would happen, in the presence of their family members, dear near ones, and they're also suffering from guilt because they were not able stop that other community members were gripped by fear of being subjected to the same type of treatment. and this is something weakens social ties it also shatters the social fabric inside the community and this is something that helps the occupants not only to take control but also maintain control of the occupied territory. so it's one of the war techniques or methods and that's why we also call it warfare crime. so it's not just about the rape or the sexual crime per se. and the third point it pertains to prosecuting or bringing to justice, the focus should be on supporting sexual abuse survivors in the first place.

if these people are ready to speak out. if they are ready to give testimony and move it into the legal domain. this is their right. this is not their really duty. they're not really obliged to prove anything to prove their case or share something. but this one problem that we encountered recently, i have participated in several meetings with the high level government officials from country and informally they told something along the lines of once the war is over, we will be able to look to bring justice for survivors. so just to have some patience, it's not possible to prosecute putin and his militia. we cannot freely do the the same with all the people directly implicated.

but my personal view, it's a erroneous approach because. it's grounded in our perception of the world through the prism of the nuremberg trials. i mean, those trials were important, but this is something from the past century. the nazi war criminals that were prosecute did. but that regime collapsed. a lot of things unraveled after that the un system was established an entire of international conventions and international organizations emerged since then. why should we wait? why should tie justice to when and how this war will come to an end? we have to continue down this pathway. we have to create a special tribunal specialized in aggression. we have to craft all the necessary legal procedures we need to have this shift in our perception of the world. and once that happens, we will

be able to bring justice for sexual abuse. and also the survivors, other war crimes. so finally, these people will have a chance for getting justice without really delaying it. i do say let's make the point. you're referring to nuremberg. people often are saying we need to that nuremberg for the crimes here that nuremberg never looked there's sexual violence millions of women were raped by the russian during the second world war in germany and across eastern europe and that was completely ignored in nuremberg tribunals. so i think we need something better. we have almost no time. think we could just maybe get one very quick question. and if anybody in the audience has a question. hey, thank you so much for your

memories and your comments. i just wondered, you mentioned the donetsk book festival and i just wondered, would you be able to give us an update on? what's happening with that and plans for it going forward? thank you, jake. over the challenges of thank you very much for. your question, tanya, will correct me if i'm run if my memory serves me right in 2021 we came up an idea of creating a festival in a town that called it's called novgorod square back then and then later it was renamed it to its original name from the 1950s to new york because. basically, this was the name of this town before 1950s. this name was related a an interesting personality story. so part of the local community was ukrainian from an ethnic perspective. so there were some cossacks, but there were also some germans who

lived there. and they took the brunt of stalin's repressions and reprisals. so this is a region that also was integral to it, into this artificial image, the donbas. the donbass sea is the name up the coal basin, but the soviet propaganda did everything possible to erase or obliterate the of the region. so we can noticed this town. and she latched onto it. she an ngo, the new york literary festival. she also. organized the first new york literary festival and it took place around the same time years ago. and the purpose of the festival was twofold. the first goal was to have an impact on the community develop and grow community. and the second goal was to expose them to ukrainian

authoress mean the community took the brunt of years and years of propaganda. our is diverse our country big so there's this artificial division between the east and the west was artificially nurtured to end because we wanted to demonstrated to authors who had never visited donetsk region what it was like and right this ngo still exists and its founder unfortunately passed away but for this ngo it's still crucial to conduct the new york literary festival. but providing new york is a safe place again. new york was not under occupation, but the frontline is very close. it's very dangerous to hold any events there besides the festival. we are also organized a contest of essays for school kids in

this. she tried to support the local community this way as and the ngo will continue endeavor about three weeks ago. if i'm not mistaken, we organized a camp for children from ukrainian new york. these kids are aged 15, 16, 17. but two years ago they were still in secondary school or middle school and would write essays about return stories. they wrote some essays about the town of new york and whether they believed that it was a good idea to rename it from nebraska, new york. so my point here is that the ngo will continue its work with the local community and i'm positive that the activities of this ngo will be expanded as well across. the region, because we received positive feedback from locals, the children that these events were really important in regard to inform to their lives. so of course it has to be

continued. i would just like to very briefly add to that right after the tragic news of because death we all were getting a lot of questions about how might we support her memory, how might we support family and her family told everyone that the most important thing, victoria want is for her cause to continue for the new york literary festival, to continue. and remember, you will recall there were these various accounts bank, accounts to support the new york festival. and here i would like to thank all of you, because since then i recently ola, rosanna, who agreed to organize these accounts, she published the sums collected by ukrainians, all of different international friends and partners of victoria's. and thanks to you, we collected half a million her even to support the new york literary festival and think that it's so important when we talk about a cultural community that in

situations like this the cultural community comes together and does everything within their power to continue the cause. someone we loved so much and respected much, whom we miss so dearly that the course continues so would really like on on behalf of all of us to thank you for what you've done and for giving the festival the opportunity to persist. continue. yes, and the organization that continues education, educational project for children and hope for adults as well. so maybe we could put a link, the online version of this if people overseas want to donate i think it would be wonderful in the future we can again in new york, the literary festival and continue this conversation perhaps in happier times. and so just rest for me to thank very much these amazing women who are heroes by the way of victoria's book right,