The "Diary of Kateryna Savenko," which was published in Ukraine this July, will be translated into English and several other languages and released abroad, Nataliia Yemchenko, Head of the Supervisory Boards of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation, announced at a presentation of the book in Kyiv on Tuesday.
"If we do not return to the drama of Mariupol, justice may not come quickly… We want the book not only to preserve memory, but to influence justice," Yemchenko noted during the presentation.
Kateryna Savenko started keeping her diary on February 24, 2022, recording the tragic events unfolding in the city across 34 entries during the final 39 days of her life, initially in Russian and later in Ukrainian. She died from injuries in a hospital a few days after her husband, with whom she had worked at the Illich Iron and Steel Works. After her death, her mother managed to smuggle two notebooks out of the destroyed city of Mariupol.
According to Yemchenko, work on the book and its publication took three years from the moment the family handed the diary over to the Akhmetov Foundation’s "Civilian Voices" Museum to ensure the best possible outcome and prepare it for international release, aiming to spread the truth about Russia’s crimes in Mariupol. Forewords for the publication were written by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk and former head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance Anton Drobovych, while Yevhen Monastyrskyi, a PhD student in the History Department at Harvard University and lecturer at the Kyiv School of Economics, served as the historical editor.
"We know about military heroes. Yet I am horrified by the thought that fallen civilians are just numbers," the Head of the Supervisory Boards emphasized regarding the necessity of preserving and sharing such stories.
She reported that the "Civilian Voices" Museum has already gathered 12.5 thousand testimonies, with a total of over 145,000 stories entrusted to it.
According to Yemchenko, the museum holds at least a dozen diaries from Mariupol residents, including a separate diary by a doctor who worked in the city during those days, as well as diaries of prisoners, and is currently working on a separate project featuring 20 children who grew up under occupation but managed to evacuate to Ukraine-controlled territory.
"This war has not purely a military dimension, but a value-based dimension," Matviichuk stressed during the book presentation, highlighting its importance. Having spent 12 years documenting Russian war crimes, she stated that over 100,000 episodes of such crimes have already been recorded and entered into the "Tribunal for Putin" database, proving that these actions constitute Russia’s method of waging war.
Matviichuk noted that the concept of justice varies greatly among victims: ranging from a simple desire to convey the truth, be heard, and receive compensation, to the unwavering desire to see the perpetrators behind bars. In her view, the drive to ensure the world knows about the terrible events in Ukraine has something biblical to it, as it is the affirmation of truth.
