Unpublished Newswire

One afternoon in October, almost four years into Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, I was sitting in the sleek, modern offices of PEN Ukraine in Kyiv. We had gathered for a week-long series of meetings with writers, journalists, and human rights activists, and to visit scenes of Russian crimes in liberated areas around the country. Wartime realities made themselves apparent from one of our first sessions, in which delegates were to give brief presentations introducing ourselves and our work. Just as I was called upon to speak, our phones lit up with alerts. “Attention!” they blared...