Olha Mukha (PEN Ukraine)
photo: Natalia Khashanshin
Dear Colleagues, dear PEN friends,
I speak to you today as a woman, a Ukrainian, a member of PEN’s WWC Advisory Board, and a witness to the transformative power of words in times of war and occupation. I come from a land whose coasts are celebrated this week at the PORT Literary Festival in Odesa, focused on “Uzberezhzhya svobody”—the Shores of Freedom. This inaugural PORT festival, taking place on the last days of August, is establishing itself as a new cultural platform in southern Ukraine, with literary and musical performances, poetry workshops, and presentations by renowned authors such as Shevchenko Prize laureates and leading voices from PEN Ukraine.
Yes, another literary festival in times of war. Ukraine continues to host such events despite unrelenting attacks and growing threats to safety: organizing a festival now demands rigorous risk assessments, searching for venues with operational bomb shelters, and implementing strict security measures including “face control” at entrances. Odesa’s literary gathering is part of a wider wave of resilience—just weeks earlier, Ukraine’s leading Book Arsenal Festival in Kyiv welcomed over 35,000 visitors even as the city endured missile strikes and the destruction of cultural sites, reminding us all what is at stake.
Here we are, writing and gathering in the midst of destruction, refusing to surrender the Shores of Freedom—on both the page and the map.
Let me put it simply: for Ukrainians, our shores are not just places on a map, or symbols of our culture and how we start again. They are also places where outsiders have tried to take over, to silence us, and to wipe out everything Ukrainian—year after year. Nevertheless, there is something inside us that always pulls us back toward freedom and a true sense of who we are. No matter how hard others have tried to put out our light, the sparks of Ukrainian culture keep shining, bright and unstoppable.
This year, I will not show you any photographs. I will only say that Vika—our Vika Amelina, whom many of you may remember from the congress in India and later—was awarded the Orwell Prize for her book “Looking at Women Looking at War”. Great documentary writing and documentation of the war. Posthumously. Her husband, who is dedicating the prize funds to support the New York Literary Festival, launched by Viktoria herself, accepted the award. Her book collects witness accounts from Ukrainian women documenting Russian war crimes. It is not just a record of female voices; it is a deeply layered document of our ongoing reality, skillfully connecting today’s genocide with the historical terrors of the past. As her work evolved, it wove together diaries, interviews, field reports, excerpts from books and media—each fragment a testimony that makes us present for those who can no longer speak for themselves.
William Collins published the book in 2025, with a foreword written by Margaret Atwood. It is an unfinished collection of reports about Ukrainian women who document Russian war crimes. This collection contains the stories of witnesses who have endured the most terrible horrors of Russian aggression and occupation. At the same time, the book offers a convincing explanation of why Russia’s war against Ukraine actually began long before 2014, and why it’s so important for the world to remember the Russian terror against Ukrainians in the 1930s and 1960s.
This year at Oscar, the new film of Mstyslav Chernov “2000 Meters from Andriivka” represents us—most of the heroes in this film truly are heroes. Posthumously.
In the eleventh year of the war, there are now so many of our dead—if not in every family, then just one handshake away. Mars field in Lviv is filled with bodies and memories – there my university friends, ex colleagues, close friends, guys I was in love ones.
Speaking here, I catch myself censoring my own pain—a reflex many Ukrainians have mastered, especially when abroad, surrounded by others carrying invisible burdens. As of 2025, more than 3.8 million Ukrainians remain internally displaced, while some 9.4 million—nearly one in five citizens—have been uprooted by war, many without a permanent home for over three years. I empathize deeply with them. Time continues; perhaps only with distance will true understanding become possible. One person may have lost their home, while another’s family remains in a city under occupation—these stories are all around me. I work closely with women and girls living under Russia’s occupation, and their daily reality renders my own private anxieties almost unspeakable, so vast is the gulf. While someone grieves for relatives left behind yet still alive, others are waiting for word of loved ones in captivity; still others only know that their sons or daughters are missing, with hope flickering painfully between absence and return.
As my friend, Olesya Khromeychuk wrote: we think of a grave as a luxury, when so many have vanished without a trace. For every trauma, this war reveals a deeper wound. For every ache, there is a pain more profound still.
For every cry, there is silence. Ukrainians have been forced for years to remain silent about the dead—as if erasing names could erase loss. Today, nearly 50,000 people remain missing as a direct result of Russia’s invasion, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, their fate unknown to both families and official records. Now, we must unlearn this enforced silence and find the courage to speak about our dead as if they were still present—because their memory is a form of resistance, and their stories belong to us all. Now we must learn to speak about our dead as if they are still alive. That is uncomfortable talk, isn’t it? However, silence should be considered wrong. Now it is our duty to speak and tell their stories.
This is why PEN Ukraine remains relentless in its mission. Just two months ago, our Kyiv warehouse, where more than 11,000 books were stored, was damaged by a Russian missile strike. Despite this, our “Unbreakable Libraries” initiative continues undeterred, delivering thousands of English and bilingual books to frontline and war-affected libraries. Since 2022, in partnership with PEN International, English PEN, Book Aid International, and major British publishers, we have distributed over 45,000 books to libraries across 17 Ukrainian regions, including those in liberated and high-risk areas.
Through the “People of Culture Claimed by War” project, we honour the almost 200 artists, writers, and cultural figures lost since February 2022, creating a living digital archive of Ukrainian talent whose lives were cut short by invasion.
Our “Lysty do Vilnoho Krymu” (“Letters to Free Crimea”) campaign connects the global community with Ukrainian political prisoners held in Russian-occupied Crimea, while programs like “Prospisi” workshops, “Merezhivo” public readings, and regional PEN meetings nurture new literary voices and strengthen international solidarity among writers and activists.
Much of our work is dedicated to supporting journalists in Russian captivity—amplifying their stories, offering moral mentorship, and keeping public attention alive. In these conditions, mentorship is no mere symbol: it is a living bridge, connecting those silenced and isolated by war to a world that refuses to forget them.
What is the special role of women in all of it?
Women are at the heart of everything I have just described. Ukrainian women are not just witnesses; they are warriors—my friend Eva is great port but also a soldier; they are documentarians, truth-tellers, advocates, and the tireless voice behind so many efforts. From frontline librarians risking their safety to deliver books, to the writers facing immense loss and recording testimonies, to volunteers collecting letters for prisoners—these are women who refuse to let our stories disappear. They are the ones listening compassionately to the pain of others, translating silence into words, and shaping how the world remembers this war.
In truth, the very act of documenting, advocating, and caring—the core work of PEN, the work of writers—is powered by women’s empathy and determination. Ukrainian women are keeping the current of our culture alive. Their voices are irreplaceable. In the spirit of this Congress, and of our shared commitment to “Words of the Free,” let us listen to them, and let us not allow their work or their experience to slip into silence.
Let us honour, protect, and amplify the voices of women writers, journalists, and cultural workers, in Ukraine and everywhere war tries to erase memory. Let us help turn their pain and stories into words that move the world to action, solidarity, and hope.
Storytelling resurrects; it makes the absent present. It blurs the boundary between the living, the dead, and the unborn—provided the listener is attentive and the storyteller is a true master, but most of all, when the story is retold with love. Our pain is censored by comparison, ranked and calibrated. But here is the place for literature. As one of our Ukrainian writers Anton Sanchenko said: culture is humanity’s backup. Literature is irreplaceable now. Every act of speaking out, collecting stories, and refusing silence repairs the breach.
Today, I ask one thing of you. I ask you to apply your writers’ magic: to turn silence into words.
Speak for us and about us. Translate the silence into words, as only writers can. This is our fight against the “syndrome of banality”, against becoming indifferent to each other’ suffering.
Raise your voices for our imprisoned journalists and cultural figures—your attention, your mentor letters, and your advocacy save lives and preserve hope.
Support our libraries and festivals. Nominate and amplify Ukrainian voices. Remember those lost, and challenge the world to reckon with the crimes against Ukrainian culture.
Don’t allow those stories to be erased. Insist on precise, truthful fact-finding. Teach empathy, reject cynicism, and let your words strike with the current of a strong story.
The theme of PEN Ukraine for 2025 is “Being in the World.” To be in the world is to fight for our place, our voices, and the right to be heard and to be told about.
Thank you for your attention, your solidarity, and for making words powerful enough to keep us present—both for ourselves, and for those who can no longer speak.
