Last weekend, Ukraine’s Centre for Civil Liberties was one of three joint recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. The human rights organization was founded in 2007 to protect human rights in Ukraine – 15 years later, however, its work largely focusses on documenting Russian war crimes. Even before the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24th February this year, the centre had already spent the previous eight years documenting abuses in Crimea and the Russian-occupied territories of the Donbass.
The centre’s director, Oleksandra Matviichuk, visited Berlin this week following the ceremony in Oslo for the premiere of the documentary film "Oh, Sister!" in which she features. The Berliner Zeitung met with her for an interview about the centre’s work and the message she wants to send to Germany’s politicians. 39-year-old Matviichuk speaks softly, but with clear determination and resolve for the lessons she says the world needs to learn from Russia’s war on her country.
Berliner Zeitung: Ms Matviichuk, thank you for finding the time to talk to us. How has the last week been for you representing Ukraine whilst accepting the Nobel Peace Prize? Do you feel you’re also somehow on the frontline?
Oleksandra Matviichuk: I'm proud to be part of the brave Ukrainian people. I feel a huge responsibility, because my battlefield is the law. Now I and other Ukrainian human rights defenders are doing our job in circumstances where the law doesn't work. But I do believe that we have to find a way to fix it, to stop Russian atrocities and hold perpetrators accountable.
The Centre for Civil Liberties is part of the Ukrainian campaign for the creation of a special international tribunal to charge Russia with the crime of aggression. Is this the only way accountability can be achieved for the victims of the war?
When we speak about justice, we speak about returning people their names, because war turns people into numbers - the scale of the war crimes is so large that it is impossible to recognise all the stories. This justice of returning people their names also means restoring their human dignity, because when you start an investigation, you have to understand what's happened to him or her, what were the circumstances? What were the details of these crimes, who committed it? We will use all methods of investigation to achieve justice for each and every person, regardless of who they are, whatever their social position, what type of crime they endured, and whether or not the media is interested in their names. Justice is a way to prove the slogan that the life of each person matters. And when we speak about how to achieve this, we have to speak about a complex strategy – and yes, an international tribunal is an essential part of this strategy.
More than 27,000 war crimes documented in Ukraine since 24th February
The Centre of Civil Liberties is overseeing a network of local investigators who are on the ground documenting Russian war crimes – from torture and sexual violence to killing of civilians. Do they still have faith that this accountability can be delivered?
A lot of those who support and help us not only believe in this accountability, they also need it. I work directly with people who have been through hell documenting scenes of war crimes since 2014, when Russia started this war. I know from my own experience that these people need to restore not only their broken lives, broken families, broken visions of the future, but they also need to restore their belief that justice is possible, even after a delay in time.
How many crimes have been documented so far?
Over the last 10 months of large scale Russian aggression we have documented more than 27,000 war crimes. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. We haven’t been able to collect every criminal episode that Russian troops have committed – but it shows the scale, the gravity and the pattern of Russian soldiers using war crimes as a method of warfare. They attempt to break people’s resistance and occupy Ukraine by inflicting immense pain on its civilian population. They are doing this deliberately.
In your speech at the Nobel ceremony, you talked about making human rights meaningful again. How do you explain to yourself how we got to this point where Russian soldiers are committing these horrific crimes, and large parts of the world are just watching it happen?
Russian troops already committed horrible crimes, not only in Ukraine, but in Chechnya, Moldova, Georgia, Mali, Syria, Libya, but only ever faced impunity. The reaction of the civilised world was to continue to shake hands with Putin, they continued business as usual. They continued to build pipelines. Political decisions were taken not according to human rights values, but for economic benefits. If you declare that your values are around human rights, you have to give them the same priority as economy and security, in both your internal and external policy. Russia is a vivid example for what happens if you start to close your eyes to human rights violations when you make political decisions. Without this valuable foundation, you reach a situation when countries suddenly start to be a threat not only to their own citizens, but to the whole world.
That’s clearly a reference to the German-Russian Nord Stream 2 project. What message do you want to impart during your visit to Berlin?
Firstly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude for the solidarity we feel from people in Germany. It's a very difficult time for Ukrainians and we will always remember who stood with us – especially as I know a lot of people in Germany have taken care of Ukrainian refugees. My mother is also a refugee in Germany. So we are very grateful - but the truth is that we need more assistance from the German government, especially in military systems. I just spent three days at the European Parliament where we received the Sakharov Prize. All the MPs I met said they know we are fighting not only for Ukraine, but for all of Europe, because if we are not able to stop Putin in Ukraine, he will go further.
So I have a question: Why do we still not have the Leopard battle tanks? Why do we still not have enough air defence systems and cannot close our sky? There have been new air attacks in recent days and when I return to Kyiv, I don't know whether or not I will have light. Why was my friend Andriana Susak, who joined the army to defend her six-year-old son and a peaceful future for all Ukrainian children, severely injured by a mine when she was driving with her unit in a civilian car– while so many countries have armoured vehicles sitting in storage? We ask the government to provide Ukraine with everything we need in this fight, because this is not a war between two countries, it’s a war between two systems, authoritarian and democratic. Russia is attacking Ukraine with Iranian drones – so if authoritarian government regimes are cooperating with each other, democracies and people who believe in them have to work together even more.
The former British prime minister Boris Johnson recently said that he thought the German government would have been happier if Ukraine had capitulated right after the full scale Russian invasion on February 24th. Do you share his view?
I’m sure that is not the position of people in Germany. I'm not a politician, I'm not a diplomat, I'm not very interconnected with politics. I'm a human rights defender and I believe in human solidarity. All my experience shows that ordinary people have a much greater impact than they can even imagine and human solidarity has no limitation within state borders.
Joint awarding of peace prize "reminds of the struggles of Soviet dissidents"
Do you think it was appropriate that this year’s Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to you as well as recipients from Russia and Belarus [Russian human rights organization Memorial and Belarussian activist Ales Bialiatski – editor’s note]?
Some Ukrainian people criticised this combination, because it has sometimes been written that Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus had received the Nobel Peace Prize. That's ridiculous, because we are at war and Russia and Belarus are aggressor states. The nomination also reminded people of this old Soviet narrative that we are three sisterly nations. But like everybody who was around during the Soviet time knows, we were not sisters, there was only one nation who dominated in politics, culture and language. That was a big lie and an important context for the reaction. But we tried to explain to Ukrainian people that it's not an award for countries, it’s an award for people who have jointly fought for human dignity for many years and are now jointly trying to resist the common evil which is again trying to dominate in our region. It's a very human story which reminds us of the struggle of dissidents in the Soviet Union, which also built invisible ties between each other. They even had a motto: For your freedom and ours.
While you were in Oslo you asked to be interviewed separately from Yan Rachinsky of Memorial. Why was that?
It's very important for us to be heard. We have huge respect for Memorial, they have been our partners and friends for years. They have always called the war a war, they always called the occupation of Crimea illegal. They helped us a lot with Ukrainian political prisoners. But they and I have a lot to say about our different situations. So it’s good to do separate interviews so we can both be heard.
You're from the generation that grew up in a newly independent Ukraine, was there during the Revolution of Dignity, and has now been on the frontlines for the last eight years. Did you ever predict that this course of Ukrainian history would culminate in the current war – and what is the legacy you want your generation of Ukrainians to leave?
Rationally, it's easy to predict what has happened – but you can't be prepared for war. You have to be careful not to fall into the psychological trap of denying the reality of war because of how cruel it is. If you see problems, you have to solve them and do what you can to not make them worse, you can’t reject reality. If you don't, the results can be catastrophic. Now we have to accept the reality that we live in a world where the international system of peace and security lies in ruins, just like in Ukrainian Mariupol, because the whole UN system couldn't stop Russian atrocities.
We have to not only accept this reality, but we have to change this reality because it's very dangerous, not just for Ukrainians but for all people. In the present situation, your security and human rights guarantees depend on whether or not you live in a country which belongs to some military group. We need to relaunch and reform the system to protect people all over the world from authoritarian regimes. The first step has to be the exclusion of Russia from the UN Security Council for systematic violation of the UN charter.
What other reforms do you think are needed?
The law is not a conservative system, it’s dynamic material. Before the Second World War, even the idea that the international community could interfere in the affairs of states that severely violate human rights was a marginal idea. But this has become a common and essential idea. We have to invent new ideas, we have to go further and make the system appropriate to the current situation. We need an effective architecture of peace and security.
"Putin is scared of freedom, not NATO"
What should have been the moment that caused the international community to exclude Russia before it could come to the invasion of Ukraine?
The international community should have reacted when Russia started to persecute its own civil society. This was many years ago and was a moment when the international community should have said very clearly that such behaviour was not appropriate, that human rights violations will not be tolerated. This was a missed opportunity and we are now fighting with the consequences.
How are you feeling about returning to Kyiv?
When I'm in Kyiv, I refuse to go to the bomb shelter - not because it's bad behaviour, but because I want to retain at least some control over my life. When I'm abroad and I hear that once again, Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities have been shelled with hundreds of rockets, of course my natural response is to become very worried. But I want to return home – even if I can’t stop Russian rockets, I want to share the danger with my loved ones.
We talked about what accountability looks like for you. What does victory in this war look like for you?