What story can Ukraine tell people in Latin America? Why is it important to have a conversation beyond “geopolitics” and focus on human experiences, on suffering and compassion, and on courage and resistance?

The guest of this episode is Sergio Jaramillo, former High Commissioner for Peace of Colombia and founder of the campaign of solidarity with Ukraine ¡Aguanta Ucrania!, which is mobilising Latin American writers, musicians, human rights defenders, politicians and other voices in support of Ukraine’s struggle against the Russian invasion.

We had this conversation on June 25th, 2023, in Kyiv. The next day, Sergio traveled to the warzone in Eastern Ukraine, together with his Colombian colleagues: writer Hector Abbad, and journalist Catalina Gomez. They were accompanied by a Ukrainian writer, Victoria Amelina. On June 27th, as they were sitting at the Ria Lounge restaurant in Kramatorsk, 40 kilometers from the frontline, it was struck by a Russian missile. Victoria Amelina was severely injured and succumbed to her wounds a few days later in a hospital in Dnipro on July 1st.

Since that tragedy, we didn’t know how to publish our conversation, or whether we should publish it all. Emotionally it was tough. It took us several months to come back to it, but we asked Sergio to meet again, this time online, to tell me what happened in Kramatorsk on that day. We attached this excerpt to our conversation.

Host: Volodymyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian philosopher and journalist, chief editor of UkraineWorld.org.

Related episodes:

Victoria Amelina. In Memoriam https://ukraineworld.org/en/podcasts/victoria-amelina-memoriam

On Empathy - with Catalina Gomez https://ukraineworld.org/en/podcasts/ep-269