During the winter holidays, Russian troops repeatedly shelled Ukrainian cities. Most of the missiles were shot down by the Air Defense Forces of Ukraine. Those that weren’t hit critical infrastructure facilities and residential buildings, resulting in deaths and injuries. 

Whats going on?

• On December 31, Russia launched a massive air attack killing several people in different regions of Ukraine. As a result of this attack, the campus of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv suffered significant damage.
• On January 14, a Russian missile hit a high-rise apartment building in Dnipro and destroyed a whole section of the house. At least 46 people were killed, 80 people were wounded, and 11 are still missing. Russians do not even try to cover up the fact  that their rockets are targeting homes of civilians. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, the missile that hit the multi-storey building in Dnipro had a combat range of 950 kg and was launched from a long-range bomber, so-called «aircraft carrier killer», designed to destroy aircraft carrier groups at sea and can be equipped with a nuclear warhead. In June, the Russian military used the same type of missile to target a shopping mall in Kremenchuk (Poltava region), killing 21 people.
• In occupied Berdyansk (Zaporizhzhia region), Russians dismantled the monument of Ukrainian writer Taras Shevchenko. During the Russian artillery shelling of Kherson, the typography and the editorial office of the local newspaper Debut Hazeta were destroyed. As of January 11, UNESCO has verified damage to 236 cultural sites in Ukraine since February 24 2022. According to the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine the armed aggression of the Russian Federation has damaged more than 1,200 objects of cultural infrastructure in Ukraine, including more than 500 cultural monuments.

Losses

• The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has recorded 18,358 civilian casualties in Ukraine since February 24. It is impossible to establish the actual number of the dead, wounded, and forcibly displaced people due to the fact that the occupation forces are continuing their assault on Ukraine. Russia’s war against Ukraine has already produced almost 8 million refugees.
• On December 19, Serhiy Shkvarchenko, Merited Artist of Ukraine, an artist of the Pavlo Virsky Ukrainian National Folk Dance Ensemble, was killed during a mortar shelling at the frontline. He defended Ukraine in the ranks of the Armed Forces.
• On December 20, film director Oleh Bobalo-Yaremchuk was killed at the frontline near Bakhmut. He was the commander of the first mortar battery and fought in the 23rd battalion. Oleh Bobalo-Yaremchuk directed numerous television films, commercials, and TV projects.
• On December 20, «The Last Smiles of Ilovaisk» author Oleksandr Kuzenkov was killed in action near Bakhmut (Donetsk oblast).
• On December 22, the death of Oleksandr Snihurovskyi, an actor of the Kyiv Black Square theater, became known. He was killed at the frontline near Bakhmut. He lived in California for a long time, but returned to Ukraine after the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion.
• On January 1, the news emerged of the death of prominent Ukrainian film editor Viktor Onysko. The filmmaker had been fighting against the Russians from the very beginning of the war. Among others, he had defended the Kherson region and East of Ukraine.
• On January 3, librarian of Zhytomyr Regional Scientific Universal Library named after Oleh Olzhych Vitaliy Pyvovarov was killed at the front.
• On January 16, historian Valeriy Romanovskyi died in a hospital after 4 months of being in a coma as a result of a severe combat wound. 
• Find out more in our monitoring of losses among cultural figures.

Russian crimes againts media

• 470 freedom of speech violations were committed by Russia in Ukraine in 2022 in the course of the full-scale invasion. The Russian crimes committed on Ukrainian territory include murder, kidnapping, firing at and wounding journalists, attacks on TV towers, threats, attacks on media offices, cybercrimes, shutting down Ukrainian broadcasting, as well as brand theft and creating fake clones of local publications and channels to spread Russian aggressive propaganda. Furthermore, due to the full-scale war, at least 216 media outlets have had to cease their work. This happened not only in the areas affected by the hostilities or occupation, but also in the relatively quieter parts of the country, due to the financial crisis caused by the war. 
• In 2022, Russians killed 43 media members on Ukrainian territory. Eight of them were killed in the line of duty, and 35 died as combatants or fell victim to Russian shelling, not in the course of their journalistic work.
• On December 25, the news emerged of the death of Anton Kolomiets, a media worker from Kherson. He was killed while defending Ukraine on the frontline of the war with Russia.
• Find out more about Russia’s crimes against the media in Ukraine in our report.

Here And Now

“Here-And-Now: Stories of Journalists at War” is a project consisting of stories of those who cover and reflect on Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, who shoot and record stories from the frontline and from the rear, who go live on air from air-raid shelters, alongside those who have enlisted in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. All of these people speak about their personal and professional choices. Read and listen to stories of:

• Bogdan Logvynenko – founder of Ukraїner web-project;
• Volodymyr Yermolenko – philosopher, essayist, translator, journalist, PEN Ukraine President, and Tetyana Ogarkova – literary critic, writer, and journalist;
• Eldar Sarakhman – Ukrainian journalist, photographer and videographer;
• Nataliya Gumenyuk – journalist specialising in foreign affairs and conflict reporting, founder of the Public Interest Journalism Lab;
• Myroslava Gongadze – Head of Broadcasting for Voice of America in Eastern Europe.

Share materials

• Alim Aliev “National communities of Ukraine in the war against Russia” (Ukraїner);
• Stanislav Aseyev «Evil Must Have a Name» (Apofenie);
• Oleksandr Mykhed ‘We will rebuild everything’: war, loss and faith in Ukraine (Financial Times);
• Taras Lyuty «The War for Decolonization» (Apofenie);
• Dave Eggers “The Profound Defiance of Daily Life in Kyiv” (New Yorker);
• Zarina Zabrisky “Three Ukrainian poets to spoil Westsplaining fest in Italy” (Euromaidan Press);
• Tonia Andriichuk “Erasing Ukrainian Collective Memory” (Ukraїner);
• Olena Cherednychenko «Our kids draw torn-up Russian flags»: a chronicle of besieged Mariupol (Ukrainska Pravda);
• Juri Durkot “Auch Wohnungen haben in Lemberg ihre Schicksale” (Welt in German);
• Iryna Tsilyk, Artem Tschech «Es ist unsere Aufgabe, voll und ganz zu leben» (Republik in German);
• Oleksandr Mykhed “Requiem für Tarantino” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in German);
• Mykola Riabtchouk “À propos de la paix en Ukraine” (Desk Russie in French);
• Marina Sorina “Parole in terra bruciata: tre poete ucraine dicono la guerra” (Heraldo in Italian);
• Agnieszka Lichnerowicz “Mitologia Putina. Rosji w tej wojnie nie chodzi o terytorium” (Polityka in Polish).

Dialogues on war

We continue our conversation series, #DialoguesOnWar, where Ukrainian and foreign intellectuals talk about the experience of the war and share their own observations:

• Dialogues on War: Maria Tomak and Christina Lamb (February 2, 6 PM Kyiv time);
• Dialogues on War: Sofia Cheliak and Margaret MacMillan (text)

PEN Ukraine webpage on war

Visit our webpage for the latest news and materials on Russia’s war against Ukraine. Here you will find information on the situation in Ukraine, links to important materials and information resources, petitions, addresses, a list of publications about Ukraine to read in English, and books by Ukrainian authors recommended for translation. The page is continuously updated with the latest news and links.