Two years after her tragic death, Ukrainian writer, human rights activist and Documenting Ukraine grantee Victoria Amelina was posthumously awarded the prestigious UK Orwell Prize for her book Looking at Women, Looking at War on 25 June 2025. She is the first Ukrainian writer to receive the prize.
Victoria Amelina received a Documenting Ukraine grant in 2022 for her project War and Justice Diary: Looking at Women Looking at War, a nonfiction book that interwove her own story of documenting war crimes with those of many other female civil society leaders who have dedicated themselves to the same endeavor. The book follows the paths of journalists, human rights defenders, lawyers, and volunteers who document war crimes in Ukraine while the war is still ongoing.
The posthumous recognition of Amelina’s work is an important moment for Ukraine’s cultural sphere and an opportunity to remind the world about 208 Ukrainian artists who have been killed by Russia since 2022. At the time of Amelina’s murder, the manuscript for Looking at Women, Looking at War remained incomplete. Her closest friends and colleagues finalized the manuscript with minimal editorial interventions and published the work.
