The award-winning Ukrainian writer and war crimes researcher Victoria Amelina was critically injured in a Russian missile strike on a pizza restaurant in eastern Ukraine this week.
Human rights activists say the attack on the crowded building, which killed 12 people including 14-year-old twins and injured at least 60 others, was a war crime.
The Ria Lounge was one of the most popular restaurants in Kramatorsk and was filled with civilians when it was hit on Tuesday evening. “There were no military objects that could have been a legal target for the attack around that day,” PEN Ukraine and the war crimes campaign group Truth Hounds said in a statement that confirmed Amelina was among the injured.
A novelist who mostly set aside her writing after the full-scale Russian invasion last year, Amelina has focused instead on documenting war crimes and working with children on or near the frontline.
“Both PEN Ukraine and Truth Hounds have travelled with Victoria many times to frontline territories,” the statement said. “Now, Victoria has become a victim of a war crime herself.”
Her work included unearthing the diary of Volodymyr Vakulenko, a fellow writer who was illegally detained and killed by Russian soldiers in the city of Izium at the start of the war. The diary, which was buried in his garden, served as a real-time document of Russian atrocities.
Russia has repeatedly hit civilian targets in Ukraine. Attacks have included a strike on Kramatorsk railway station last year that killed more than 60 people as they tried to escape the fighting, and one targeting a shopping mall in Kremenchuk where at least 20 people died.
“The shelling of the Kramatorsk Ria Lounge is another crime in this chain, and [further] evidence of the way Russians wage their wars,” the statement said.
Russia claimed the attack targeted the Ukrainian military and foreign mercenaries. Truth Hounds spoke to witnesses who confirmed there were no military targets at the site.
“Analysis of the destruction and witness testimonies indicate that, most likely, Russia’s armed forces used an Iskander missile to carry out the attack,” the joint statement with PEN Ukraine said. “This is a missile with a high accuracy, so Russians knew exactly what it would hit.”
In the restaurant with Amelina were three Colombians including Catalina Gómez, a journalist friend who travelled with her in an ambulance to hospital.
With her were the writer Héctor Abad Faciolince and Colombia’s former high commissioner for peace Sergio Jaramillo, who was in Ukraine as part of a campaign to bolster solidarity with Ukraine in Latin America.
