Victoria had a particular gift for empathising with people and in fact, her first novel was about a man who had this gift or curse you could call it of empathising so deeply with people's suffering that he physically underwent the suffering himself. She started writing poetry because she found that the effect of war on language was rather like the effect ofwar on buildings. What particularly worried her was that there had been a previous purge of artists and intellectuals in Ukraine, which had taken place during the Stalin years. Victoria could see that Vladimir Putin with his war was also picking off. Cultural figures, artists, intellectuals, filmmakers, journalists, were among those being targeted by him.