The documentary project “Diaries of the Peaceful: Voices of Those Who Survived and Those Who Did Not” is an offline initiative by the “Voices of the Peaceful” Museum of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation.

The exhibition is based on two diaries, two personal stories connected by time – spring 2022 – and place – Mariupol. A city that the enemy turned into hell in just a few days, leaving tens of thousands of people trapped in this inferno. One story ended tragically, while the other concluded with rescue.

Kateryna Savenko began keeping a diary from the first explosions on 24 February. She wrote daily until the death of her husband Vitalii and her own injury, which proved fatal. After her death, her mother managed to rescue the two invaluable notebooks from the destroyed city of Mariupol.

Volodymyr Velychko recorded his memories later, while staying in a hostel in Kyiv. He, his wife, and their four children survived bombings, filtration, time in occupied Donetsk, and finally returned home. These are “Four Months of Life” that will never be erased from memory.

These stories do more than reconstruct the past; they create a living dialogue with the present and the future, shaping our shared memory and highlighting the continuity of human strength and resilience.

The “Voices of the Peaceful” Museum of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation collects stories of Ukrainian civilians who became victims or witnesses of the war, from 2014 to the present.

In 2024, the Museum expanded its activities into the offline space, presenting a multimedia area of the “Voices of the Peaceful” Museum as part of the exhibition “VOICES,” also held at the Museum of Kyiv History.

The Museum houses the world’s largest collection of firsthand stories about the war in Ukraine, with an archive of over 130,000 accounts. To share your story, visit the Museum’s portal at https://civilvoicesmuseum.org/ or call the free hotline 0 (800) 509 001.