On 30 June, the Cherkasy Regional Universal Scientific Library named after Taras Shevchenko hosted a presentation of the collection of documentary evidence ‘Memory as a Duty’. The publication contains testimonies of eyewitnesses and victims of war crimes committed by the Russian Federation in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.
The collection is the result of a long work of human rights activists, journalists and researchers who collected about 100 interviews with victims from Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Chernihiv regions.
‘Memory as a Duty’ was presented by experts who have been recording war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine for a long time. The authors and compilers of the book, historians and journalists joined the discussion. Among them were Taras Shcherbatiuk, head of the Cherkasy Human Rights Centre, journalist and candidate of historical sciences Maksym Stepanov, director of the Nova Doba news agency Tetiana Ocheretyana, and Vitaliy Masnenko, doctor of historical sciences and professor at Bohdan Khmelnytsky National University of Kyiv.
– The Cherkasy Human Rights Centre started documenting war crimes back in 2014. With the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation, this work has only intensified. We joined the initiative ‘Tribunal for Putin’, united with human rights activists from other regions, and began to document violations of international humanitarian law. This is how the idea of creating this collection came about,” said Taras Shcherbatiuk.
According to him, the book contains not only stories about destroyed lives and destinies, but also specific legal qualifications of crimes that give grounds for international justice. The publication was made possible with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation.
The collection was compiled by Maksym Stepanov, who shared some of the stories included in the book during the presentation. From the story of the death of six-year-old Sofia Fedkiv and her one-and-a-half-month-old brother Ivan during an attempt to escape from occupied Nova Kakhovka, when the whole family was killed by enemy shelling, to the testimonies of people who survived torture, each story in the collection is imbued with pain, loss, and at the same time incredible human courage. For example, Maria from the village of Bilenkyi, Zaporizhzhia region, told how she lost her husband during an artillery shelling – when she returned home, she found neither her house nor him. Olha Maliuhina from Yulivka, Zaporizhzhia district, was just taking out the garbage when she heard the sound of an enemy aircraft – the debris hit her in the back. The woman, who was 60 years old at the time, underwent 12 complex surgeries and a leg amputation. These are just a few of the more than two hundred testimonies that formed the basis of the book, which became not just a documentary fact but a human cry for the truth that cannot be forgotten.
– It was a concentrated stream of pain. I’ve been working in journalism for over 25 years, but I’ve never had to work with material like this before. These are not just facts, they are living testimonies that are difficult to read, but impossible to ignore,” Stepanov said.
Vitalii Masnenko, Doctor of Historical Sciences, who reviewed the collection, stressed that documenting such testimonies is not only an element of the struggle for truth, but also part of the formation of national memory.
– This book has three dimensions: human rights, informational and scientific. It is a unique source for researchers, which, through oral history, records not statistics but human experiences of the war. Such publications help us understand that Ukrainians are a people who resist even in the most difficult conditions,” Masnenko said.
The book also contains fragments of international and Ukrainian legislation that confirm the qualification of the actions of the Russian occupiers as war crimes and crimes against humanity. The stories are accompanied by photographs, quotes, links to media materials and legal norms.
During the event, the issue of creating an English-language version of the collection was raised. According to the participants, this is a necessary step to inform the international community about the true scale of the tragedy taking place in Ukraine.
– We hope to find resources for translation. This is important for our partners, friends abroad, and the Ukrainian diaspora. This book should be read not only in Ukraine,” the organisers stressed.
At the end of the meeting, Maksym Stepanov reminded that at least 30 Ukrainian journalists, including Crimean Tatars, are currently being held captive in Russia. They are being tortured, imprisoned and persecuted. The participants called on the media community to actively support their colleagues and disseminate information about their fate.
The book Memory as a Duty is not only an archive of pain, but also a symbol of Ukrainian resilience, proof of war crimes, and the voice of those who were tried to keep silent. It is a preserved history that demands justice.
Source: Nova Doba
