{"id":18357,"date":"2025-02-24T12:58:22","date_gmt":"2025-02-24T12:58:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/?p=18357"},"modified":"2025-05-13T14:53:38","modified_gmt":"2025-05-13T14:53:38","slug":"ukraine-andrey-kurkov-on-three-years-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/2025\/02\/24\/ukraine-andrey-kurkov-on-three-years-of-war.html","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine: Andrey Kurkov on Three Years of War"},"content":{"rendered":"
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24 February 2025: Today marks three years since the Russian Federation\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which has brought suffering to millions of people, with Russian forces <\/strong>committing<\/strong><\/a> war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law. On this fateful day, Ukrainian writer and former president of PEN Ukraine Andrey Kurkov reflects on the impact of the war on Ukraine\u2019s invaluable cultural heritage.<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to <\/strong>PEN Ukraine<\/strong>\u00a0and partners<\/strong><\/a>, at least 186 cultural figures have been killed by Russian forces as of February 2025. Those killed included writers, translators, artists, musicians, photographers, and historians who played a key role in enriching and celebrating Ukraine\u2019s culture and identity. PEN International utterly condemns the violence<\/a> unleashed by Russian forces against Ukraine and urges full justice and accountability.<\/strong><\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u2018My worst fears are coming true \u2013 I am inside a new Executed Renaissance,\u2019 wrote Victoria Amelina in the preface to the book by the murdered Ukrainian poet Volodymyr Vakulenko. The book would not have appeared without Amelina. She was determined that Vakulenko\u2019s voice would not be silenced.<\/p>\n

After men in Russian military uniform took Vakulenko from his home in early March 2022 Victoria spent several months trying to discover his fate. Eventually, his body was found in an unmarked grave in the forest near the town of Izyum. By that time, Amelina had dug up Vakulenko\u2019s hand-written diary which he had buried under a cherry tree in his parents\u2019 garden. She deciphered the text and prepared it for publication. This diary formed the basis of the book and from it we learn about Vakulenko\u2019s thoughts and feelings \u2013 what he worried about \u2013 while he and his son who has special needs lived under occupation. This was the last thing Vakulenko wrote in his life, his very last work.<\/p>\n

Victoria Amelina\u2019s book A Diary of War and Justice: Looking at Women Who Look at War<\/em> was recently published simultaneously in the UK and France. This was Victoria’s last work. She did not even have time to finish it. She wrote it while searching for the body of Volodymyr Vakulenko. She was still writing it when she was mortally wounded by a Russian missile in Kramatorsk.<\/p>\n

If not for the war \u2013 the Russian aggression \u2013 Vakulenko and Amelina could have written many more books.<\/p>\n

There is nothing more tragic than marking the anniversary of an ongoing war. An anniversary should be an occasion to sum up and reflect on results, but what are the results of this war? They can be calculated in the hundreds of thousands of lost lives, in the endless destruction of people\u2019s homes, gardens, vineyards, villages, cities, and the ruination of our forests, fields, factories and power plants.<\/p>\n

The results of the war can also be calculated in the number of destroyed libraries, theatres, universities, schools, printing houses, film studios and museums.<\/p>\n

During a war, the aggressor totally undermines the victims\u2019 right to culture, to shelter, to life. Sometimes it seems that culture has become the aggressor\u2019s main target \u2013 the victim they wish to hurt most because a nation\u2019s culture sets it apart from other nations and simultaneously provides it with the motivation and strength to resist invasion.<\/p>\n

It is precisely this function of culture \u2013 the preservation of identity \u2013 that has made Ukrainian culture a major target of aggression \u2013 and not for the first time.<\/p>\n

As the war rages on, in universities and schools, Ukrainian youth study the tragic history of the writers and poets of the first \u2018Executed Renaissance\u2019: 250 young and active Ukrainian poets and writers who were detained by the Soviet authorities and then shot between 1937 and 1938. The works that these murdered writers did not manage to write and publish remain in our minds as a kind of phantom of Ukrainian literature \u2013 cultural riches that we can only imagine.<\/p>\n

In the same way, we imagine the phantom of Ukrainian architecture \u2013 hundreds of buildings that were never built because their potential creators were repressed. The phantom of Ukrainian fine art looms over us in the thousands of uncreated canvases of murdered artists.<\/p>\n

This phantom element of Ukrainian culture grows larger with each day of the Russian aggression. Uncreated Ukrainian culture is beginning to outweigh created works as the list of cultural figures killed by Russian weapons grows longer \u2013 a list which now bears the names of more than 180 writers, musicians, artists, film directors and actors.<\/p>\n

More than a thousand Ukrainian cultural sites have also been destroyed by the Russian army. But if there was a building, a painting or a monument, we may still have at least a photograph and the memory of what once existed.<\/p>\n

The destruction of Ukrainian cultural monuments has felt like an axe chopping away at my roots. I remember when a Russian missile hit the house-museum of Ukraine\u2019s best-known naive artist, Maria Primachenko. I remember when another missile destroyed the museum of my favourite Ukrainian philosopher and poet, Grigory Skovoroda who was born near Kharkiv in 1722. The ruins of the Mariupol theatre with people sheltering inside it \u2013 all destroyed by a huge bomb dropped from an airplane. Then there was the Odesa Cathedral, its roof split open to the sun\u2019s rays by yet another missile.<\/p>\n

It gradually became obvious that the bombs and missiles were not destroying historical buildings and their contents, they were trying to annihilate an entire culture. It has become clear that after the war, apart from the reconstruction of villages and towns, the restoration of culture will also be required. Ukrainian literature, music and cinema \u2013 they have all been bled dry by this war. It pains me to write about this or even to think about it. This pain will remain. It will appear in the fabric of post-war Ukrainian culture.<\/p>\n

Authors who survive will have to write books in lieu of their fallen colleagues as well as for themselves. We will all have to work much harder to fill, at least partially, the jagged empty spaces gouged into Ukrainian culture by Russia\u2019s bombs and missiles over the last three years.<\/p>\n

Andrey Kurkov<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Note to editors:<\/strong><\/p>\n

For further details contact Aur\u00e9lia Dondo,<\/strong> Head of Europe and Central Asia Region at PEN International:\u202fAurelia.dondo@pen-international.org<\/a><\/p>\n

For media queries, please contact Sabrina Tucci<\/strong>, PEN International Communications and Campaigns Manager,\u202fSabrina.Tucci@pen-international.org<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

24 February 2025: Today marks three years since the Russian Federation\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which has brought suffering to millions of people, with Russian forces committing war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law. On this fateful day, Ukrainian writer and former president of PEN Ukraine Andrey Kurkov reflects on the impact of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":117,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-solidarity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/117"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18357"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19036,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18357\/revisions\/19036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}