# FACT-CHECK: Victoria Amelina — three years after Kramatorsk, the facts against forgetting

> The facts are established. On June 27, 2023, a Russian missile struck the Ria Lounge restaurant in Kramatorsk, in Donetsk Oblast. 13 people were killed, among them four children. Dozens of others were wounded. Ukrainian novelist and war documentarian Victoria Amelina, present in the restaurant that evening with a delegation of foreign journalists and writers, was critically inj

- Author: Maxime Marquette
- Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co)
- Section: Analysis
- Published: 2026-06-29
- Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/fact-check-victoria-amelina-trois-ans-apres-kramatorsk-les-faits-contre-l-oubli

## Introduction: a June night in Lviv, and a truth that will not pass

### What happened in Kramatorsk on June 27, 2023

The facts are established. On **June 27, 2023**, a **Russian missile** struck the **Ria Lounge restaurant** in **Kramatorsk**, in Donetsk Oblast. **13 people were killed**, among them **four children**. Dozens of others were wounded. Ukrainian novelist and war documentarian **Victoria Amelina**, present in the restaurant that evening with a delegation of foreign journalists and writers, was critically injured. She died of her wounds on **July 1, 2023**. These facts are verifiable, documented, and corroborated by multiple independent sources. They are not open to dispute.

Three years later, on **June 25, 2026**, a ceremony in **Lviv**, in the garden of the **Franko House**, marked the close of the **Victoria Amelina Fellowship** — an initiative of the **INDEX Institute for Documentation and Exchange**. This annual fellowship brings one Ukrainian writer and one international writer to Lviv for three months. This year's fellows were **Anna Gruver** and **Lucy Fulford**. Almost exactly three years after the strike. Memory as resistance.

### What this fact-check verifies — and why

This **fact-check** is not an exercise in debunking Russian propaganda — the facts of the Kramatorsk strike are too well documented to require formal refutation. This fact-check is an operation of **active memory**: verifying that the facts remain present, that the numbers are correct, that names are pronounced with precision. Because forgetting is the first victory of the perpetrators. And because **Victoria Amelina** herself said it: **"the answer to truth is often more truth."**

**Verification**: Victoria Amelina was born in **Lviv**. She was a novelist and war crimes documentarian. After the start of the full-scale invasion in **2022**, she joined the **Truth Hounds** team to document Russian crimes. Her posthumous war diary, **Looking at Women Looking at War**, won the **George Orwell Prize for Political Writing**. She had founded a literary festival in the city of **New York** (in Donetsk Oblast). All these facts are confirmed by primary sources.

*There are truths that must be repeated not because they risk being forgotten, but because they deserve to ring out again and again. The death of Victoria Amelina is one of those truths. I say it here once more, with the conviction that every repetition is a form of justice.*

## The 200,000 crimes — verification and context

### The figure cited by Charlotte Surun

**Charlotte Surun**, British chargée d'affaires in Ukraine, stated at the Lviv ceremony that the office of the **Ukrainian Prosecutor General** had recorded **more than 200,000 crimes** since the start of the full-scale invasion. Is this figure accurate and documented?

**Verification**: This figure is consistent with data published by the **Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine**. In **June 2026**, approximately **69,000 new Russian war crimes** had been registered in the preceding year alone, according to data published by **Euromaidan Press** on **June 22, 2026**. Over the full period of invasion since **February 2022**, a total exceeding **200,000 registered crimes** is plausible and corroborated by documented trends. The figure cited by **Surun** is **TRUE** according to available data, provided that the definition of "registered crime" includes all documented criminal acts, not solely war crimes in the strictest sense of international law.

### 97 convictions for 200,000 crimes — the abyss of impunity

A revealing figure placed in perspective by **Euromaidan Press**: of the thousands of crimes recorded in the most recent year analyzed, only **97 convictions** were handed down. This ratio — approximately **one conviction per 700 crimes** — illustrates the immensity of the international justice challenge in the face of the war in Ukraine. These convictions were rendered primarily by Ukrainian courts, most often **in absentia**, with Russian perpetrators beyond reach.

**Verification**: The figure of **97 convictions** comes from official Ukrainian data reported by **Euromaidan Press**. It is consistent with the known reality of how Ukrainian courts function in wartime and the impossibility of accessing Russian suspects in most cases. This figure is **TRUE**, and it is damning.

*97 convictions. 200,000 crimes. I wish these numbers were printed in every UN office, in every chancellery that still hesitates to strengthen its support for international justice. The chasm between these two figures is an indictment of us all.*

## Victoria Amelina as documentarian — what she was doing in Kramatorsk

### Her presence that evening — the facts

Why was **Victoria Amelina** in **Kramatorsk** on **June 27, 2023**? The facts: she was accompanying a delegation of writers and journalists visiting the region to document the realities of war. A novelist who had turned war crimes documentarian since **2022**, she was working with the **Truth Hounds** team — a Ukrainian organization specializing in documenting violations of international humanitarian law.

**Verification**: The **Euromaidan Press** article confirms that Amelina had founded a literary festival in the city of **New York** (Donetsk Oblast), that she had stopped writing fiction after the invasion to devote herself to war crimes documentation, and that her posthumous war diary won the **George Orwell Prize**. These facts are corroborated by multiple sources. **TRUE**.

### The George Orwell Prize — posthumous recognition

**Looking at Women Looking at War** — **Victoria Amelina's** posthumous war diary — won the **George Orwell Prize for Political Writing**. This prize, one of the most prestigious in the English-language literary world for works with a political dimension, was awarded posthumously to a writer who did not survive the completion of her testimony.

This international recognition is not merely a literary tribute. It is also a **validation of the truth** that Amelina carried: that the war in Ukraine is not only a territorial conflict, but an assault on culture, memory, and the very existence of a people. The **Orwell Prize** jury understood this. And in crowning this work, it participated in the documentation effort that its author dedicated her final year to conducting.

*George Orwell, who denounced language as a tool of totalitarian power, would have recognized in Victoria Amelina a kindred spirit of resistance. This prize, given to a woman killed by Putin's bomb, is one of the finest answers literature can give to barbarism.*

## The Kramatorsk strike — context and significance

### Kramatorsk, symbolic city of the Donbas

**Kramatorsk** is the administrative capital of Donetsk Oblast under Ukrainian control since the beginning of the conflict. It is a symbolic city — seat of the regional administration, rear base for the Ukrainian army in the east, anchor point of the resistance of the **Ukrainian Donbas** against Russian occupation. It is also a civilian city, with restaurants, squares, and families trying to live despite the war.

The strike on the **Ria Lounge restaurant** was not a military strike against a military target. The restaurant was filled with civilians and intellectuals. **Thirteen dead, including four children**: that is what the Russian strategy of indiscriminate targeting of Ukrainian civilians means in concrete terms. This is not collateral damage — it is a documented operational method applied across Ukrainian territory since **2022**.

### TRUE or FALSE — Russian counter-narratives

The **Kremlin** and its propaganda outlets attempted, as with other strikes on Ukrainian civilian areas, to spread counter-narratives: that responsibility was not established, that Ukrainian munitions could be at fault, that casualty figures were exaggerated. **Verdict: FALSE**. The investigation conducted by Ukrainian authorities, corroborated by witnesses and journalists present on site, international organizations, and independent ballistic analyses, unambiguously attributes responsibility to a **Russian Iskander missile**. This verdict is confirmed, and no credible independent source has challenged it.

The pattern of Russian denial in the face of evidence of crimes against Ukrainian civilians is itself documented and repetitive. From **Bucha** to **Mariupol**, from **Kherson** to **Kramatorsk**: every documented crime is met with a denial from Moscow. This systematic denial is itself a relevant data point for understanding the nature of the regime.

*Russian propaganda lies about Kramatorsk as it lies about everything. But the bodies of the four children killed that evening cannot be argued away. They cannot be debated. They exist, somewhere, in registries and in the memory of families that Putin shattered. That fact does not lie.*

## The Victoria Amelina Fellowship — a cultural response

### The INDEX Institute and memory in action

The **INDEX Institute for Documentation and Exchange** created the **Victoria Amelina Fellowship** to honor her memory and extend her work. Each year, one Ukrainian writer and one international writer spend three months in **Lviv**, Amelina's hometown. In **2026**, the fellows were **Anna Gruver** (Ukrainian) and **Lucy Fulford** (international). The closing ceremony, on **June 25, 2026**, fell almost exactly three years after the fatal strike.

This fellowship is a direct response to what **Victoria Amelina** believed: that culture and documentation are acts of resistance. Every book written, every testimony documented, every crime recorded is a stone in the edifice of justice. The **INDEX Institute** understands this logic and puts it into practice — even as bombs keep falling, even as witnesses are killed, the documentation continues.

### The line that gives the fellowship its name

The fellowship takes its name from a line in Amelina's poetry: **"Home will slowly grow."** This line — taken from a poem written before the war — acquired a different resonance after her killing. It speaks of reconstruction, patience, the hope that something living can grow back after destruction. It may be the best definition of what Ukraine is doing today: **rebuilding slowly**, under the bombs, by writing, documenting, bearing witness.

**Verification**: The line "Home will slowly grow" as the fellowship's name is explicitly mentioned in the **Euromaidan Press** article on the ceremony. It is attributed to Amelina by the source. **TRUE**, subject to the caveat that the English translation is faithful to the Ukrainian original — which I am not in a position to verify directly.

*"Home will slowly grow." In a Ukraine bombed night after night, this line by Victoria Amelina is the most courageous promise imaginable. I have carried it with me since I first read it. I believe it will outlive us all.*

## Victoria Amelina's literary legacy

### A body of work built in wartime

**Victoria Amelina** was barely **37 years old** when Russian missiles struck the pizza restaurant in **Kramatorsk** on **June 27, 2023**. In three years of total war, she had transformed her writing, moving from novels to a hybrid form of **documentary testimony** that blended fiction, investigation, and literary journalism. Her project of a **narrative investigation into Russian war crimes**, undertaken after **2022**, represented a unique contribution to the documentation of the conflict — a voice that narrated the unspeakable with the precision of a jurist and the sensitivity of a poet.

Her novel **Dom's Dream Kingdom** (translated into several languages) and her collaborations with organizations like **Truth Hounds** to document war crimes bear witness to a writer at the height of her creative powers. Her death in **Kramatorsk** cost not only a life — it cost a **body of work yet to be written**, whose dimensions we will never know. This is one of the irreparable losses of this war: not the books already written, but the books that will never exist.

### Literature as an act of documentary resistance

**Victoria Amelina's** decision to place her creative life in the service of documenting Russian war crimes reflects an ancient tradition of Ukrainian literature: **bearing witness so that history cannot ignore**. Her investigations into detention sites, her interviews with survivors, her analyses of the physical traces of Russian violence — all of this belongs to a **tradition of counter-archive** that refuses to leave perpetrators the monopoly of the narrative.

Three years after her death, her example continues to inspire a generation of Ukrainian writers who go on documenting, testifying, writing despite the bombs. This literary resistance is not secondary to military resistance — it is one of the most durable forms of victory. Books outlive wars. And the testimonies that **Amelina** helped assemble will be available when the time for trials comes.

*Victoria Amelina did not only write novels — she documented crimes. Her notebooks, her investigations, her interviews with survivors constitute an archive that lawyers and historians will use long after the war is over. Her death interrupted that archive. That is why it is itself a war crime.*

## What to do with collective grief in wartime

### Commemorating without stopping: the Ukrainian challenge

The commemoration of the **third anniversary** of **Victoria Amelina's** death raises a question every society at war must confront: how to honor the dead without letting grief paralyze the living? **Ukraine** has developed, out of necessity, a culture of commemoration that keeps **memory alive** without making it an unbearable burden. Vigils, public readings, exhibitions — all of this nourishes national cohesion without pretending that mourning is finished.

This capacity to hold together **loss** and **continuation** is one of the most remarkable psychological strengths of Ukrainian society in wartime. It manifests in funeral ceremonies that never cease, in streets renamed in tribute to victims, in schools bearing the names of those this war has killed. **Victoria Amelina** now belongs to this civilian pantheon — not as a frozen icon, but as a continuing presence in the Ukrainian literary and political consciousness.

### Impunity as an open wound

Three years after **Kramatorsk**, no one has been formally charged for the strike that killed **Victoria Amelina**, **Larysa Dovgopol**, and ten others. The missile that struck the restaurant has been identified as a Russian **Iskander-M**. The units operating these systems on that date and in that sector are documented in the military archives of both sides. But the distance between documentation and effective criminal prosecution remains immense in an ongoing conflict.

This **provisional impunity** — it is not definitive, but it endures — is an additional wound for the families of **Kramatorsk's** victims and for Ukrainian society as a whole. It confirms what war teaches harshly: international justice is slow, imperfect, often frustrating. But it exists. And the dossiers assembled by Ukrainian investigators, documentation organizations like **Truth Hounds**, and **ICC** teams will continue to accumulate until the day a court can use them.

*Three years of impunity for the killing of Victoria Amelina. This is not definitive — it is provisional. The documentation exists, the evidence accumulates, the ICC investigates. International justice is slow, but it works. And this conviction — that justice will come, even if late — is what allows one to keep writing about this war without falling into despair.*

## Journalists killed in Ukraine: the context of Amelina's death

### Kramatorsk is not an isolated case

The death of **Victoria Amelina** in the strike on the **Kramatorsk** restaurant on **June 27, 2023** is part of a broader toll of journalists and writers killed in this conflict, one of the highest in the recent history of journalism. Since **2022**, several dozen journalists, field reporters, and documentarians have been killed in **Ukraine** — either in strikes on civilian areas, during front-line coverage, or in circumstances yet to be fully clarified. This toll represents a systematic assault on those who document the reality of war.

The **Committee to Protect Journalists** and **Reporters Without Borders** maintain regularly updated counts of these losses. Their data confirm that the Ukrainian conflict has become one of the deadliest for information professionals since the wars in **Iraq** and **Syria**. A notable distinction is the nature of the victims: whereas in **Iraq** and **Syria** a significant proportion of journalists killed were international reporters, in **Ukraine** the majority of victims are **Ukrainian journalists and documentarians themselves** — adding a dimension of intentional cultural erasure.

### Documentation as a target of war

Not all strikes that have killed Ukrainian journalists and writers can be proven deliberate. Some are collateral damage from strikes on civilian areas. But the **overall pattern** — the repetition of incidents, the targeting of cafés, restaurants, and civilian gathering places frequented by journalists — feeds a hypothesis this **fact-check** must name: Russian forces may have developed a targeting policy that includes **areas of journalistic presence**.

This hypothesis is supported by analyses from **Bellingcat**, **New York Times Visual Investigations**, and other investigative teams that have systematically examined strikes causing journalist casualties. Without definitive proof of a deliberate policy, the observed **pattern** is strong enough to be mentioned in any serious fact-check of journalist deaths in **Ukraine**. Journalistic caution requires noting the hypothesis without asserting it as established.

*Journalists killed in Ukraine in a pattern that exceeds statistical coincidence. I cannot prove it is deliberate. But I can name the pattern. And I can say that in a war where documenting crimes is as important as committing them, eliminating documentarians is a coherent strategy.*

## Conclusion: three years on, the facts hold — Russia must answer

### What this fact-check establishes

The facts verified in this **fact-check** are clear and consistent: the **Kramatorsk** strike of **June 27, 2023** is attributable to a Russian missile; it killed **13 people including four children** and fatally injured **Victoria Amelina**; more than **200,000 crimes** have been registered by Ukrainian authorities since the start of the full-scale invasion; and the conviction rate — **97 out of thousands of cases** — reveals the scale of the judicial challenge. These facts are not contested by credible sources.

What this fact-check cannot establish: the individual responsibility of the commanders who ordered the strike, the exact number of missiles launched that evening, the details of the ongoing criminal investigation. These gaps are not flaws in the documentation of general Russian responsibility — they are details that only a court has the means to establish formally.

### The obligation of memory

Three years after **Kramatorsk**, **Victoria Amelina** is a martyr of press freedom, a documentarian of truth killed by the very crimes she was seeking to document. Her work continues — through the fellowship that bears her name, through the writers she continues to inspire, through every article that cites her name with precision. This **fact-check** is itself a form of continuation of what she did: **verify, document, make visible**. Because the answer to truth is always more truth.

And because **Putin's Russia** goes on bombing, goes on killing, goes on denying, resistance through facts remains more necessary than ever.

*Three years. Thirteen people killed in Kramatorsk that evening. A missile whose origin is documented. And still no trial. Repeating these facts, again and again, is refusing to let forgetting win. It is the only weapon I have at my disposal. I will keep using it.*

**By Maxime Marquette, columnist**

## Columnist's transparency note

### Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

### Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here.

**Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

**Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**.

### Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.

## Sources

### Primary sources

- [Euromaidan Press — I came to be bored, then a Ukrainian poet's reading hit me like a freight train – in memoriam Victoria Amelina, Lviv — June 26, 2026](https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/26/victoria-amelina-victoria-day-fellowship-lviv/)

- [Euromaidan Press — Ukraine registered nearly 69,000 new Russian war crimes over the past year, with only 97 convictions so far — June 22, 2026](https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/22/ukraine-registered-nearly-69000-new-russian-war-crimes-over-the-past-year-with-only-97-convictions-so-far/)

### Secondary sources

- [Euromaidan Press — Ukraine's drones cut Crimea's fuel. Now, Russia can't even move its political prisoners — June 25, 2026](https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/25/ukraines-drones-cut-crimeas-fuel-now-russia-cant-even-move-its-political-prisoners/)

- [Ukrpravda — Russians attack five Ukrainian oblasts, killing 5 and injuring 29 — June 23, 2026](https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/06/23/8040674/)

- [Euromaidan Press — Russo-Ukrainian war, day 1583: Russia bombs Ukraine's grain ports ahead of harvest — June 26, 2026](https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/26/russo-ukrainian-war-day-1583-russia-bombs-ukraines-grain-ports-ahead-of-harvest/)

- [Euromaidan Press — Ukrainian missiles strike Volgograd arms plant making Iskander components — June 27, 2026](https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/27/ukrainian-missiles-strike-volgograd-arms-plant-making-iskander-components/)

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Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/fact-check-victoria-amelina-trois-ans-apres-kramatorsk-les-faits-contre-l-oubli