Books by Major General of Justice Vasyl Vovk presented at Uzhhorod University
On 5 November, a presentation of books by Vasyl Vovk took place in the reading hall of the Scientific Library of Uzhhorod University. He is a Major General of Justice, Honoured Lawyer of Ukraine, Candidate of Legal Sciences, and in 2009–2010 and 2014–2015 headed the Main Investigation Department of the SBU. The author devoted both publications to events he experienced personally: the investigation of the Holodomor as genocide of the Ukrainian people and the first months of the Russian-Ukrainian war in Donetsk region.
The meeting was opened by Vasyl Ilnytskyi, Director of the Information and Publishing Centre of Uzhhorod University: “Our university has a pleasant tradition of presenting new publications that are of public significance for affirming the national idea and our historical memory. Today's presentation and meeting with the author are of this kind.”
The Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Vasyl Levkulych, introduced those present to the author's biography in greater detail. He related that Vasyl Vovk took part in the release of hostages and in the international investigation of the crash of the Malaysian Boeing MH17, shot down over Donbas in 2014. The Dean also drew attention to the symbolism of the date: the meeting took place on the eve of the Day of Remembrance of the Holodomor Victims.
The author himself suggested a live conversation instead of an official presentation. “I am not a writer. I have been an investigator all my life,” Vasyl Vovk admitted and proceeded to his account. He began with the book “The Security Service of Ukraine: The Holodomor of 1932–1933 – Genocide of the Ukrainian People”. According to him, this publication is not so much about the Holodomor itself as about how its criminal nature was legally proven. Investigators worked with archives in Ukraine, in particular in Zakarpattia, as well as in Kazakhstan and Russia, and recorded the testimony of people who remembered the terrible years. The case comprised 273 volumes; in the course of the investigation, 871 sites of mass burials were established. The outcome was the decision of the Kyiv Court of Appeal of 13 January 2010: the court recognised the Holodomor as genocide of the Ukrainian people, and Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Postyshev, Kosior and other Soviet leaders as guilty of organising it. Soon several states recognised the Holodomor as genocide, and today there are already more than thirty such countries. For the author this topic is also personally painful: in 1933, in the arms of his five-year-old father, his younger brother died of starvation.
The second book, “Diary of an Undeclared War: Through Sloviansk to Paris across the Fields of War”, transports the reader to 2014–2015. At that time Vasyl Vovk returned to the post of head of the SBU investigation department and personally took part in special operations against the Russian occupiers in eastern Ukraine. It is interesting that the author wrote “Diary of an Undeclared War” earlier than the book about the Holodomor, although he presented both publications together. On its pages Vasyl Vovk returns to the spring of 2014, when the Security Service of Ukraine was one of the first to find itself on the frontline. According to the author, it was the fighters of the “Alfa” special unit who were the first to engage the occupiers near Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. The book covers the path from the Donetsk events to international platforms where the author told the world the truth about Russian aggression. This is the testimony of a person who saw the war from within long before its full-scale phase. Finally, the author announced a new book about the investigation of the MH17 crash, which is to be published in the near future.
The meeting concluded with a lively discussion: students and teachers had the opportunity to put their own questions to the guest.
Valeriia Melnyk,
Information and Publishing Centre.
