Yeva Skalietska is a 13-year-old Ukrainian girl who grew up living with her granny in Kharkiv, near the Russian border. She loves learning languages,bowling, playing the piano and painting.

On Thursday 24th February 2022, Yeva Skalietska was woken by the sound of explosions. Though there had been rumblings and rumours, few truly believed that war would break out between Russia and Ukraine. And yet – it did. What followed were twelve days in Ukraine that changed Yeva’s life forever.

You Don’t Know What War Is, a diary of her experiences of fleeing war in Ukraine and settling in Dublin.  Published in the UK by Bloomsbury (partnered with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency) and in the US by Union Square Publishers, the book has been translated into sixteen languages.

Introduced by Michael Morpurgo, author of War Horse, it has been compared to Anne Frank’s diary for its powerful insight into what conflict is like through the eyes of a child.

Yeva presented at TEDxOxford in January 2023 when she was just twelve years of age.