“Our literature struggles to navigate against the current of muteness. The current of silence carries us away, and in this abyss of darkness and defilement, words are born. They are neither beautiful nor pleasant: they hurt, like arrows and bullets.”

Tetyana Ogarkova and Volodymyr Yermolenko, Life on the Edge (Gallimard, 2026)

The Mariupol theater looted, the museums emptied in Kherson, the libraries silenced: the war Russia is waging against Ukraine is not only territorial, but also one of identity, culture, and language. The goal of Putin's regime is to annihilate Ukrainian sovereignty, deny their existence as a nation, erase their history, crush their culture, and Russify their language.

Faced with this offensive, Ukraine is also resisting through culture. Never before have Ukrainian literature, theater, poetry, and music experienced such a vibrant energy—nor such resonance beyond the country's borders. Writers are writing under the bombs. Playwrights are creating from exile or from besieged Kyiv. Philosophers are searching for the words to express what it means to live as a Ukrainian today.

It is to this reality and this vitality that "For Ukraine, for their freedom and ours!" intends to give voice and face on July 17 and 18, with two days of literary and intellectual encounters organized in partnership with the Chartreuse de Villeneuve-lès-Avignon and the Maison Jean Vilar . For the second consecutive year, the association is offering, at the heart of the Avignon Festival, a program that brings together leading voices of this intellectual and artistic resistance.

Volodymyr Yermolenko, philosopher and president of PEN Ukraine, co-author with Tetyana Ogarkova of *Life on the Edge* (Gallimard, 2026), will be joined by Macha Isakova, founder of the Ukrainian Drama Week at the Théâtre du Soleil, Olga Sagaidak, president of the Coalition of Ukrainian Cultural Actors, and Alain Guillemoles, journalist and special correspondent in Kyiv. Actors will lend their voices to texts born in the war—short, intimate plays that speak of the experience of ordinary people caught up in the violence.

This choice of Avignon is not insignificant. The world's largest theatre festival is a space for influence and debate where "For Ukraine, for their freedom and ours!" wants to present Ukrainian culture not as a victim, but as what it is: a living, demanding culture that resists and creates.

Plunder, destroy, Russify: Putin's cultural war

From the Nazi occupation onward, the jurist Raphael Lemkin observed that the best way to destroy a nation was to eradicate its culture. This is precisely what Putin's Russia is doing: by systematically destroying, looting, and appropriating the artistic and archaeological heritage of the occupied territories of Ukraine, Moscow is attempting to erase the distinctiveness of a culture that does not belong to a supposed "Russian world." Its originality and authenticity are the hallmark of a sovereign people.

The record is documented and damning. As of April 15, 2026, UNESCO lists no fewer than 526 damaged cultural sites—153 religious buildings, 39 museums, and 21 libraries. More than 1.7 million objects have been stolen from the occupied territories. The collections of 77 Ukrainian museums are now listed in the Russian Federation's state catalog of museum holdings. This is not wartime vandalism: it is deliberate planning, orchestrated at the highest levels of the Russian state, with Putin, his generals, and the Ministry of Culture as the masterminds.

For Ukraine, for their freedom and ours! has been conducting the definitive investigation into this systematic looting since 2022, in partnership with the Raphael Lemkin Society. In June 2025, the association filed a communication with the International Criminal Court targeting Vladimir Putin and eight high-ranking Russian officials for war crimes against cultural heritage. It calls on ICOM to expel ICOM Russia, and on the Venice Biennale to refuse the return of the Russian pavilion as long as the war of aggression continues. The Avignon meetings are part of this same commitment: to document, to raise awareness, and to refuse erasure.

“Faced with the war of falsehood waged by an army of Russian trolls, young playwrights strive to strip away the superficiality of language in order to better sculpt situations in which ordinary people, caught in the throes of aggression, nevertheless try to preserve what is essential. One of the paradoxical effects of this predation has been to reveal the richness, vibrancy, and acuity of a culture too long assimilated to that of a supposed ‘Russian world .’”

Sylvie Rollet and Emmanuel Wallon, academics