We had this conversation on June 25th, 2023, in Kyiv. The next day, Sergio traveled to the warzone in Eastern Ukraine, together with his Colombian colleagues: writer Hector Abbad, and journalist Catalina Gomez. They were accompanied by a Ukrainian writer, Victoria Amelina.
On June 27th, as they were sitting at the Ria Lounge restaurant in Kramatorsk, 40 kilometers from the frontline, it was struck by a Russian missile. Victoria Amelina was severely injured and succumbed to her wounds a few days later in a hospital in Dnipro on July 1st.
Since that tragedy, we didn't know how to publish our conversation, or whether we should publish it all. Emotionally it was tough. It took us several months to come back to it, but we asked Sergio to meet again, this time online, to tell me what happened in Kramatorsk on that day. We attached this excerpt to our conversation.
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