\n Inside Kyiv's St Michael's cathedral, mourners gathered Tuesday to bid farewell to Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina, who died of her wounds suffered in a Russian missile strike on a restaurant.\n<\/p>\n
\n The coffin of the rising star in Ukrainian literature was placed at the centre of the cathedral, draped with the blue-and-yellow national flag.\n<\/p>\n
\n The 37-year-old was dining at the Ria Pizza restaurant in Kramatorsk -- popular with journalists, the military and aid workers -- when a Russian strike hit last week.\n<\/p>\n
\n She was seriously wounded and died in hospital four days later, one of 13 people, including three children, killed in the strike.\n<\/p>\n
\n Her family, including her 10-year-old son, as well as several writers and journalists attended the ceremony. Her body will then be taken for burial in her native city of Lviv in western Ukraine.\n<\/p>\n
\n A crying woman in dark sunglasses carried Amelina's portrait, a youthful-looking woman with long blonde hair.\n<\/p>\n
\n She had written several adult and children's fiction books and was reportedly working on her first non-fiction book, about women documenting Russia's invasion.\n<\/p>\n
\n She had also set up a literary festival in the eastern Donetsk town of New York -- the exact origins of the name are disputed -- which now lies on the front line with Russia.\n<\/p>\n
\n Amelina also worked for a foundation called \"Truth Hounds\" that says it carries out field missions to document Russian \"war crimes\" in Ukraine.\n<\/p>\n
\n Attending the funeral, the group's director Roman Avramenko said Amelina \"knew how to convey the truth to the large masses\",\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Thanks to her persistent work, the whole world continued to learn the truth about this war, about Russia's aggression,\" he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"But now we have lost this person.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n An Orthodox priest waved incense over her coffin and musicians played Ukrainian folk instruments -- the kobza, sopilka and trembita -- singing words by national poet Taras Shevchenko.\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'Beyond literature' -\n<\/p>\n
\n Amelina died of her wounds in a hospital in Dnipro, where she was transported after the Kramatorsk strike.\n<\/p>\n
\n The PEN Ukraine writers' association said she was dining with a delegation of Colombian journalists at the pizzeria when the strike hit.\n<\/p>\n
\n In her last tweet, she shared a photo of Colombian writer Hector Abad Faciolince embracing a Ukrainian librarian in the village of Kapytolivka, recently reclaimed by Kyiv from Moscow's forces.\n<\/p>\n
\n Other recent social media posts showed her reciting her poetry at a literary festival in Kyiv.\n<\/p>\n
\n PEN Ukraine praised her literary work as well as her aim to gather evidence on Russian crimes in Ukraine.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Victoria Amelina has expanded her work far beyond literature,\" it said.\n<\/p>\n
\n Amelina was born in Lviv, western Ukraine, in the dying years of the Soviet Union.\n<\/p>\n
\n PEN Ukraine said she had briefly moved to Canada -- home to a large Ukrainian diaspora -- with her father, but later returned to her native city.\n<\/p>\n
\n According to Ukrainian organisations, she worked in Lviv's IT sector for a decade before quitting the industry to focus on her writing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Inside Kyiv's St Michael's cathedral, mourners gathered Tuesday to bid farewell to Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina, who died of her wounds suffered in a Russian missile strike on a restaurant. The coffin of the rising star in Ukrainian literature was placed at the centre of the cathedral, draped with the blue-and-yellow national flag. The 37-year-old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-118969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n