Bearing Witness to the War For Ukraine: Nonfiction Texts
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Date
2026
Authors
Kvit, Serhiy
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Abstract
Effets Réels is an international literary festival dedicated to contemporary literature of reality, memory, and engagement. It took place in April 2026 for the first time. Effets Réels brings together European writers, journalists, artists, and translators around a shared question: how can the contemporary world be expressed in the face of political, social, and his-torical crises. Particular attention was paid to the Russian–Ukrainian War, in which truth becomes the first victim of aggression. Through a series of lectures, roundtables, performances, screenings, and workshops, the festival explores the relationships between literature and testimo-ny, personal narratives and collective history, the transmission of memory, as well as war, migration, and resistance. From Ukraine to the Mediterranean, from family heritage to erased memories, Effets Réels advocates for an embodied, crit-ical, and open form of literature – one capable of reflecting on the present and renewing the forms of non-fiction storytelling. The initiator and one of the key architects of Effets Réels festival is Claudio Milanesi, a professor at Aix-Marseille University, the largest franco-phone university in the world. The National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Acade-my was deeply represented at the festival. Konstantin Sigov, honorary doctor of Aix-Marseille University, Tetyana Oharkova, and Anastasia Fomichova contrib-uted to the formation of a distinct "Ukrainian segment" dedicated to presenting real stories and narratives about the full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war.My contribution, delivered both at the École de Journalisme et de Com-munication d’Aix-Marseille and within the Festival program, addressed issues of freedom of speech in Ukraine during the full-scale war, efforts to counter Rus-sian propaganda and disinformation, the resilience of the Kyiv-Mohyla Acade-my, achievements of the Mohyla School of Journalism and the StopFake project, as well as the prospects for cooperation with Aix-Marseille University. I also par-ticipated in a discussion on Ukrainian non-fiction literature as a form of reporting real events and conveying truthful information about the war.
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Keywords
Russian–Ukrainian War, "Effets Réels", Ukrainian resilience, armed resistance, national identity, article
Citation
Kvit S. Bearing Witness to the War For Ukraine: Nonfiction Texts / Serhiy Kvit // The Ukrainian Quarterly : a Journal of Ukrainian and International Affairs. - 2026. - Vol. 82, No. 2. - P. 42-55.