Charlotte Higgins

So I knew her for a very brief period.

But, you know, in times of great stress and in a war, you actually become friends with people rather quickly.

And...

She's one of the reasons that I returned to Ukraine.

You know, I went to Ukraine once to do one article and then it was Victoria who pointed me in the direction of another story and said, I think you should really think about writing about this.

And it was the story of another writer, Volodymyr Vakulenko, who had been killed in

in his village under occupation in 2022 and Victoria as a war crimes investigator had gone to his village and had found the diary of occupation that he had written and buried in his garden

No, it's an extremely sad story and I wrote about that extremely sad story and the day I finished writing that extremely sad story, Victoria herself was killed.

I guess I pretended to be very unaffected by it for about six months because I felt that it would be unprofessional to be upset and then six months later I was really, really, really upset.

I mean, why wouldn't you be?

This incredible young woman had been killed.

And I went to see her grave a couple of days ago and it's tremendously sad.

She had wonderful, close, lifelong friends and most importantly of all, a son and a family who, you know, she is very, very dearly missed.

Certainly there is a huge theme of decolonisation in Ukraine, which has been ongoing since at least 2014, if not before.

I suppose the Ukrainians see that Russia has traditionally used its culture to promote itself, they would say, as a weapon at the expense of the culture of its colonised people.

So you could say the same, you know, about Georgia or about Lithuania or wherever, but in Ukraine, during the war, there have been laws that have come in that have suggested or mandated, I should say, the removal of Ukraine.

public memorials that glorify the Russian Empire and Russian imperialism in general.

And previously there had been similar laws around de-Sovietization.

So, you know, that's when all the statues of Lenin went long before I came to Ukraine.

So one really powerful thing is that every town and village and city in Ukraine at one point had a statue of Lenin.