Stories that you confided to us
Nadiya Sukhorukova is a Ukrainian journalist and TV presenter from Mariupol. During the blockade of her native city, Nadiya kept a diary, excerpts from which were heard in the European Parliament and published in international media. After the evacuation, the journalist wrote a book about her experiences, "Mariupol. Hope", which was translated into English and is now being sold on Amazon, the largest book platform in the world. The author and the book's characters shared their stories with the Museum of Civilian Voices of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation.
"A neighbor said that God left Mariupol. He was afraid of everything he saw. I am alive and now I will live long. And my city is dying a painful death. For twenty days I was dying with it. I was in hell," Nadiya wrote about what she went through.
On March 21, 2022, The New York Times first published excerpts from Nadiya's diary, which described evidence of russia's war crimes in Ukraine. Excerpts from the diary were published in the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Ukraine, and Scotland.
In the European Parliament, they were read by the then Minister of Foreign Affairs of Latvia, now President Edgars Rinkēvičs. The documentary "Mariupol. Lost Hope", which was based on the book, was also shown in the European Parliament.
"I was born in Mariupol and lived there all my life. It’s the city of my childhood, of my love and my happiness. I never thought I would see it dead. I couldn’t even imagine that I would be describing its agony. It's a true story of real people. They are my friends, relatives, and neighbors. I wrote in this diary everything that happened to us, to keep my sanity. I didn’t expect to survive this hell, so I tried to record the events to leave a trail," Nadiya writes about her book.
An eyewitness to terrible events, grief, and losses shares with the reader her own emotions and the "first hand" truth. This mission is shared by the Museum of Civilian Voices by the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation, which has collected more than 97,000 living testimonies of Ukrainians about their experiences during the war.
The Museum not only collects but also shares stories about russia's war in Ukraine around the world to preserve historical memory and restore justice. These stories can be found on https://civilvoicesmuseum.org/en
