Being committed to her country’s defense since 2019, both through her writings and on the front lines, in March 2024 the soldier was awarded the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine for Literature, the highest distinction for a Ukrainian writer.
In Ukraine, many artists have taken up arms to defend the country, while many soldiers have tried their hand at art, such as playing music or writing poetry, in their spare time. Combining art and war is an ancestral tradition, and one seen as an existential necessity at a time when the country is trying to forge its national, cultural and linguistic identity in the face of military aggression from Russia, with its identitarian and imperial ambitions.
