Firstly, to call the war of Russia against Ukraine a WAR. Not a "crisis", a "conflict" or a "military operation".
Secondly, to demand world leaders:
- Total isolation of Russia
- Protection of Ukrainian airspace
- NATO membership for Ukraine
PEN Ukraine appeals to international PEN centers and fellow writers, journalists and intellectuals.
On this page, we tell about current situation in Ukraine and share official sources, media and accounts on Twitter, whose information can be trusted. You can follow the updates on sources that we recommend. Now, it’s important to tell the truth about the Russia’s war against Ukraine and appeal for support of parliaments and governments in the world.
Russia attacked Ukraine on the morning of February 24, 2022
A rocket fire began on several military facilities and airfields. Dozens of civilians were also killed in residential and civilian buildings. At the same time, military equipment entered Ukrainian territory from Russia, Belarus and the previously occupied territories of Ukraine - Crimea, parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Since the first day of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine occupiers hit Ukrainian cities with artillery, rockets and aerial bombardments. Residential areas, schools, libraries, hospitals became targets for Russian terrorists. Among the facilities shelled by the Russian army are the infamous Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant and Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, which has been under Russian occupation since March 2022.
Russian propaganda openly declares its desire to exterminate Ukrainians as a nation. The majority of the Russian population supports its desire. They celebrate strikes on a civilian houses in Ukraine. Putin's popularity in Russia has skyrocketed after the invasion of Ukraine. Russian people bear responsibility for Russia’s war against Ukraine. It is not just Putin's war, it is Russia's war against Ukraine.
The Russian army fire on the civilian population using prohibited cluster and phosphorous bombs. The number of victims is so great that citizens bury civilian victims in mass graves. People have been living without food, water, light, and heat for several days now, while Russia violates all kinds of world conventions and drops bombs and missiles on people's heads.
On June 6, 2023, to stop the Ukrainian army’s counteroffensive, Russia blew up the dam of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant. This is the largest ecocide in Ukraine since the Chornobyl nuclear disaster. The total environmental and humanitarian impact is yet to be fully determined but what was clear in the immediate aftermath is that 80 settlements and over 600 km2 of the land were flooded.
Russia's war criminals use the same methods as did Nazi Germany. In temporary occupied areas Russians forcefully deported several thousand residents to Russian filtration camps. Russians withdraw Ukrainian historical, fiction books and books written after 2014 from the libraries. As a result of Russian shellings almost 1000 libraries are destroyed or partly damaged. The Russians have also burnt a large library of Mariupol’s Petro Mohyla Church with several unique Ukrainian books which are now lost forever.
Since the beginning of the full-scale war, Russian troops have been attempting to deprive Ukrainians of access to information. To this end they regularly strike TV towers in Ukrainian cities. In occupied regions occupiers broadcasting Russian propaganda.
Dozens of cultural sites have been destroyed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Among them is a museum of a Ukrainian naive artist, a plane listed in the Guinness Book of World Records, a UNESCO World Heritage Site Kyiv's St Sophia Cathedral, Odesa Film Studio, the Odesa Philharmonic, the Kharkiv Philharmonic, the Hryhorii Skovoroda Museum, cathedrals, theaters, schools, and many other architectural monuments. UNESCO calls Russia to immediately end aggression against Ukraine.
Ukraine still needs more weapons to liberate Ukrainian land from invaders and protect people's lives. The world needs to send Ukraine more and better weapons.
Firstly, to call the war of Russia against Ukraine a WAR. Not a "crisis", a "conflict" or a "military operation".
Secondly, to demand world leaders:
We call to boycott the Russian state now, until it completely withdraws from Ukraine and is held responsible for its war crimes. We consider this a necessary step to push back the aggressor that launched a violent and unjustified invasion against Ukraine, a sovereign and peaceful European country, and has long instrumentalized culture and soft power for political propaganda and manipulation of public opinion. Help Ukraine by stopping any cooperation with Russia and communicate your decision publicly to encourage your peers to follow your example. Use the hashtags #BoycottRussia, #StandWithUkraine, #StopRussia.
Ukrainian poet and writer Volodymyr Vakulenko was murdered after being kidnapped by Russian invaders. This became public on November 28, after DNA verification. His body was found in a grave in the Izium woods. According to the police, Russian occupiers shot the writer using a 9-mm Makarov pistol.
Volodymyr Vakulenko is Ukrainian writer, volunteer and civil society activist. He was born on July 1, 1972 in Kharkiv region. He is an author of 13 books, among which there are "Monoliteracy" (2008) "You Are… Not" (2011), "The Sun’s Family" (2011), "We, the Province!" (2013). His pen name is Volodymyr Vakulenko-K. His own genre, which contains elements of postmodernism, modernism, neo-classicism, and logical absurdism, Volodymyr defines as "contrliterature". Vakulenko is a winner of several Ukrainian and international literary prizes. His works have been translated into English, German, Belarusian, Crimean Tatar, and Esperanto languages.
Volodymyr Vakulenko is also known for his civic activity. During the Revolution of Dignity Volodymyr was wounded in the Mariinsky Park in Kyiv while fighting against a titushky gang (mercenary agents who supported the Ukrainian police force during the administration of Viktor Yanukovych). Vakulenko has been volunteering for the Ukrainian army since 2015.
Volodymyr Vakulenko was kidnapped by Russian occupiers on March 24. The occupiers shoved him into the bus marked with a Z-sign and took off in the direction of Izium. None of Vakulenko’s relatives had seen him or heard from him since. Before the detention Volodymyr Vakulenko decided to bury his war diary under a cherry tree in the garden, fully aware that the occupiers will come after him. After the de-occupation of Izium, Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina found the diary together with Volodymyr’s father on September 24, 2022. She passed the original records for keeping in the Kharkiv Literary Museum. Volodymyr Vakulenko’s book ‘I Am Transforming… A Diary of Occupation. Selected Poetry’ was published in 2023.
Vakulenko survived by his parents and a son diagnosed with autism.
On June 27, 2023, Russia committed another war crime, sending an Iskander missile with a highly explosive warhead at the Ria Lounge restaurant in Kramatorsk (Donetsk region). At least 13 people were confirmed dead, and 60 wounded. Three children were among the dead, including two twin 14-year-old girls.
Victoria Amelina, a Ukrainian writer and member of PEN Ukraine, who has been documenting Russian war crimes with the human rights initiative Truth Hounds, was in Kramatorsk with a delegation of Colombian writers and journalists: Catalina Gomez, Hector Abad Faciolince, and Sergio Jaramillo. As they were having dinner at the Ria Lounge restaurant downtown, Russians launched the missile attack on the establishment. Victoria was severely injured. Doctors and paramedics in Kramatorsk and Dnipro did everything they could to save her life, but the injuries were incompatible with life.
Victoria Amelina passed away on July 1 in Mechnykov Hospital in Dnipro. On July 5 Victoria was buried in Lychakiv Cemetery in Lviv.
Victoria Amelina was a brilliant award-winning, worldwide known Ukrainian writer and human rights activist who spent her time since the beginning of the full-scale invasion documenting war crimes, working with children on frontline territories, and striving to revive a literary festival that she had founded in the town of New York in the Donetsk region. Now, Victoria has become a victim of a Russian war crime herself.
Victoria Amelina’s documentary book ‘Looking at Women Looking at War’ was presented in 2025. The book constitutes a collection of reportages about the Ukrainian women documenting Russian war crimes. These women have witnessed the worst terrors of Russia’s aggression and occupation. The book is a convincing explanation why Russia’s war against Ukraine began long before 2014 and why it is important for the world to remember Russia’s terror against Ukrainians in the 1930s and 1960s. Victoria Amelina has been posthumously awarded the British Orwell Prize for this book.
On July 27, 2023, Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna went from Ukraine to Poland to get to the Russian-occupied territories in the east of Ukraine via Russia in three days’ time. Victoria was in touch with her family for the last time on August 3, 2023. Victoria’s death became known on October 10, 2024. Her father Volodymyr Roshchyn receives this information from Russian officials. On October 6, 2024, Victoria Roshchyna would have turned 28.
The body of Victoria Roshchyna who died in Russian captivity was brought back to Ukraine at the end of April 2025. The examination revealed multiple injuries and signs of torture.
Victoria Roshchyna worked with media such as RFERL, Ukrainska Pravda, hromadske, Ukrainian Radio, UA:Pershyi and Censor.net. In 2022, she was awarded the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Courage in Journalism Award. In May 2025, Victoria Roshchyna was posthumously awarded a special distinction, "For dedication to the profession under the most difficult conditions," by the Supervisory Board of the "Honor of the Profession" competition.
Forbidden Stories undertook to investigate the circumstances of Victoria's captivity in Russia and to continue her work on the stories of Ukrainians held captive by Russia. An in-depth examination of documents, testimonies, and court materials has been ongoing for over six months. The investigation brought together 13 international media outlets, including Forbidden Stories, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Le Monde, Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, ZDF, Paper Trail Media, IStories, France 24, Ukrainska Pravda, and Der Standard. Please read and share these articles:
As of May 2025, Russia committed 836 crimes against journalists and media in Ukraine. The Russian crimes committed on Ukrainian territory include murder, kidnapping, firing at and wounding journalists, attacks on TV towers, threats, attacks on media offices, cybercrimes, shutting down Ukrainian broadcasting, as well as brand theft and creating fake clones of local publications and channels to spread Russian aggressive propaganda. Furthermore, due to the full-scale war, at least 332 media outlets have had to cease their work. This happened not only in the areas affected by the hostilities or occupation but also in the relatively quieter parts of the country, due to the financial crisis caused by the war.
As of June 2025, Russians killed 107 media professionals on Ukrainian territory. 12 died while reporting, 95 died as combatants or were killed by Russian shelling or torture.
PEN Ukraine and The Institute of Mass Information (IMI) are documenting the losses among the media workers in the Russian war against Ukraine. Please, find the names of Ukrainian and international journalists killed since February 2022 here.
'Ukrainian Culture Makers Killed by Russia' is an online platform dedicated to remembering the people creating Ukraine’s culture, who have been killed during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This initiative was launched by a group of state institutions and NGOs with particular experience in memorialization, human rights and advocacy. Its purpose is to keep a record of the names of Ukrainian culture makers whose creative lives have been cut short by Russia since 2022.
The project is a joint effort of the following organizations: PEN Ukraine, INDEX: Institute for Documentation and Exchange, Ukraine Memorial Platform, Raphael Lemkin Society, Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, Human Rights Centre ZMINA, HeMo: Ukrainian Heritage Monitoring Lab, KSE Human Rights and War Memorialization Centre.
One of the project’s aims is to publicize these cases and use international advocacy to bring the perpetrators of these crimes to justice. Project organizers also wish to prolong the artistic legacy and work of those Ukrainian culture makers killed by Russia through commemorative events and publications in books or other media.
In order to comprehend the events of the last days, we launched a series of conversations #DialoguesOnWar. Ukrainian and foreign intellectuals talked about the experience of the war and shared their own observations. This page presents all the activities within the project. You have the opportunity to watch each conversation, as well as read some of them. In 2024, conversations with more than 80 Ukrainian and international intellectuals were included in the book of the same name, Dialogues On War.
"What are they fighting for?" Unfortunately, even after eleven years of Russia’s war against Ukraine, this question is still asked by those who aren’t closely acquainted with the Ukrainian context. We still have to fight many intellectual battles for our identity, and literature can be an effective weapon – or rather a form of soft power – in this educational mission. Since regaining our independence, many books have been published that explain who we are and what we strive for. The translation market has been revived in the last decade, which created an opportunity for us to address the world with our own literature. An interest in the Ukrainian context has also grown abroad, giving rise to many high-quality (and mostly non-fiction) texts.
Many important and high-quality works have appeared on the global market in the years of independence. It would be impossible to cover all of them in a single review. Still, we have compiled a list of books we would like our friends and partners to read. It emerges as a response to many requests from foreign libraries, publishing houses, embassies, and institutions that would like to share knowledge about Ukraine with their audiences.
100 books from Ukraine or about Ukraine are presented in this selection. They were all published after 1991, were written in different genres, and communicate a wide range of topics. They each represent Ukrainian identity in their own way. Our list focuses on English, German and French translations.
Before the Russian invasion of 2022, many people could barely find Ukraine on the world map. Now, the names of Ukrainian cities resonate on daily international news casts in the most tragic of circumstances. Yet their intimate pre-war histories – containing multitudes of lives, wishes and daily struggles – remain mostly unknown to the outside world. We are showcasing a collection of literary reportage that may appeal to readers abroad. Sometimes the best way to discover the real Ukraine is by giving the floor to everyday people.
PEN Ukraine created a list of 40 Iconic Figures of Ukrainian Culture, which includes innovative artists, global stars and key figures of Ukrainian culture. Among them are world-renowned artists, outstanding painters and graphic artists, architects and sculptors, poets, prose writers, playwrights, actors, filmmakers, choreographers, composers, singers. The material is available at the link.
Russia is effectively a totalitarian state, and too often it uses culture tool picked from its state propaganda toolbox. For the sake of Ukraine, and to uphold and preserve the principles of peace and order, we are calling for the international cultural community to sign these statements and petitions:
Considering the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the world wants and needs to understand what this war is really about. Over the last decade, numerous important nonfiction works, novels, memoirs, plays and even children’s books were published in Ukrainian to explain the reality of the situation. Here you can find a selection of these books which we would recommend to be translated into other languages in order for the world to gain the better understanding.
Official Fundraising Platform of Ukraine
Select where you’d like to provide support: defense, humanitarian demining, medical aid, rebuilding Ukraine, education and science.
Ukrainian Army Support
The international charitable organization 'Come Back Alive', which provides support to the Ukrainian army
Support frontline medics
Donate to save a life — make a donation or fundraise for Leleka Foundation
You can check the information and learn about common fakes and manipulations that Russia throws into the information space of Ukraine on the websites of fact-checking organizations:
