When Oleksandra Matviichuk (Boiarka, Ukraine, 42 years old) received the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize as president of the Center for Civil Liberties, I said something very significant in her speech: in the face of brutal aggression and the absence of justice, many human rights and peace activists came to forcefully defend the ideas they believe in, with weapons in their hands. His personality, his trajectory, his speech and the price of the organization that directs the light on the defense of ideas and rights of peace in an era of unleashed imperialism and growing impunity. Matviichuk gave this interview last July in Saint-Vincent (Aosta Valley, Italy), as part of the Grand Continent Summit, a conference organized by the magazine of the same name to reflect on the future of Europe. The Ukrainian lawyer is convinced that “Putin does not want peace. He wants to achieve his objective. (…) He wants to restore the strength of the Russian empire.” After the interview, if he agreed to go to Syria, another country in which Russia acted to support the dictatorship of Bashar el Asad, he would have to be subject to judicial review.
Question. These days we are witnessing intense diplomatic activity aimed at ending the conflict. What do you think is needed to achieve peace?
Answer. I work directly with people affected by this war. This therefore allows me to guarantee that the Ukrainian people are fighting for peace. Because war is horrible. Unfortunately, Putin does not want peace. Putin wants to achieve his goal. When we look at the current situation, we see how Putin is trying to fake peace negotiations, on the one hand to gain time, and on the other hand, to reduce the level of support for Ukraine and thus facilitate his goal of occupying the entire country. The main question in all of these peace talks is whether we can stop Putin. I am not just talking about an operational pause, to withdraw and resume the act of aggression, but to achieve lasting peace.
P. How to achieve this?
A. This means that we must start by discussing, first of all, real security guarantees for Ukraine, so that Putin understands that it is impossible to achieve his goal of occupying the entire country and advancing further by attacking the next one. And second, the United States and the European Union must take decisive action so that the price Putin pays for continuing the war is higher than for stopping it.
P. What was Putin’s end goal when he decided to attack Ukraine? Is it just Ukrainian or is it something bad?
A. This is not Ukrainian soil. Russia is an empire. An empire has a center, but it has no borders. An empire is always trying to expand. These are not my words. This was said by Vladimir Putin, who said that the borders of the Russian Federation “have no end.” I saw it included in my human rights work. When I interviewed people who survived Russian captivity, they told me that Russians have their future like this: first, we will occupy Ukraine, and abroad, with us, we will conquer other countries. Putin sees Ukraine as a platform to attack another European country. Its logic is historical. Sueña with her heritage. I want to restore the strength of the Russian Empire because the collapse of the Soviet Union was, in his words, “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the past.” So you want revenge. And this means that the citizens of the European Union are the only ones safe, because the Ukrainians are still resisting and do not allow the Russian army to advance and attack the next country.
P. The organization we led was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. President Donald Trump is very interested in winning something, but he doesn’t seem to care much about human rights and democracy. The 28-point plan that we saw recently actually completely ignored the aspect of justice in the future of this conflict. What do you think of Trump’s initiatives?
A. I think it’s a good attempt to stop the war. President Trump says he wants to end this war because it matters to the people who are dying. But this also means that we must be concerned about the fate of people who die in Russian prisons. And we must include the human dimension in the peace plan. And there are only 28 one-word points left of the millions of people living under Russian occupation. I’m not doing well. We are speaking to millions of Ukrainians who live in terror, without tools to protect their rights, their freedom, their property, their lives, their children, their loved ones. The Russian occupation is not just a change of government. Russian occupation means forced disappearances, torture, rape, denial of your identity, forced adoption of your own children, filtration camps and mass graves. We need to talk about what will happen with more than 20,000 Ukrainian children illegally deported and separated from their families. There are many pressing humanitarian issues and I think it is not good that politicians alone are capable of defending geopolitical interests and are not capable of managing citizens.
P. What do Europeans think? Han provides support to Ukraine – financial, military and diplomatic. Are you enough?
A. Recently I heard a senior Swedish government official tell me how much money they had to support Ukraine (he posted a picture of a presentation on his cell phone). That’s 170,000 million euros. And how much money was spent on purchasing products from Russia. And if you see it’s 311 billion, it’s much more. That’s the answer. We have heard many decisive words from the European Union. Very correct remarks. We need correct actions. There are words, there are actions and there is a gap. And the leaders of the European Union behave as if this has always existed. As happened several years before Russia started attacking. But Putin is not stupid. Why do you think you will give them several years to prepare and not attack now?
P. What should Europe do?
A. I believe that to regain the initiative, the European Union must take decisive action. How to create a special court on aggression, use frozen Russian assets for self-defense and reconstruction of Ukraine. And also help Ukraine close its airspace. I literally don’t understand what the problem is with demolishing a piece of metal that costs 1000 euros. I am referring to a Russian drone. It’s not a plane with a pilot, it’s just a piece of metal. Russia sends hundreds and hundreds of drones every day to destroy Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. And that’s it, because we have now lost the vast majority of energy infrastructure in Ukraine, which poses a real threat to millions of people who can face the winter without heat, without water, without energy, without electricity. This is a vital problem because you cannot heat a newborn’s milk.
P. In Ukraine, an anti-corruption investigation forced the dismissal of the president’s chief of staff. This is a sign that Ukraine’s democratic institutions are working, but at the same time it is a very big blow for a wartime government. What is your opinion on this?
A. Engulfed with my emotion. Yo was furious. Furious, like millions of people in Ukraine, for an obvious reason: we all have a lot. We donate to the Ukrainian army, to the heroes, to the people who lost everything in this war, to the victims of Russian war crimes. Ukrainian pensioners give the rest of their pension as a donation. But if we look at the situation from a pragmatic point of view, firstly, this corruption scandal did not arise from a journalistic investigation, but from an official investigation carried out among national anti-corruption bodies, which demonstrates that these official anti-corruption bodies are functioning effectively. Barely 12 years ago, this was unthinkable, because before the Revolution of Dignity (the Maidán), these people were untouchable. This is a sign that we are on the right track and moving forward. And secondly, which is very important: this official investigation into the anti-corruption bodies was possible because this summer a large number of people took to the streets of kyiv and other cities to peacefully protest against the Ukrainian Parliament’s attempt to limit the independence of the anti-corruption bodies. We succeeded. We preserve this independence. Yes estô is not a sign of weakness. This is a sign of strength for Ukrainian society. Because, once again, we are very different from Russia. Our source of survival does not lie in resilience at the top. It’s not a centralized vertical. It is in local democracy, in freedom of expression, in the action of ordinary people, in popular initiatives, in self-organization and in the trust of people whose efforts count. So we are not perfect. We have many problems that we take seriously. It’s our responsibility. But we remain a democracy. A democracy in transition and let’s take the right path.
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