Oleksandra Matviichuk, a leading Ukrainian human rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Laureate, says Russia’s goal is to restore its empire by force. “Russian occupation means torture, rapes, enforced disappearances, denial of your own identity, forcible adoption of your children, filtration camps and mass graves,” Matviichuk says.
Russian missile and drone attacks are continuing across Ukraine as the country already faces a cold, dark winter after Russia’s strikes destroyed about half of the country’s energy infrastructure. This comes as Russia and Ukraine completed a prisoner swap, repatriating more than 300 prisoners of war. The U.S. administration under President Joe Biden, meanwhile, has approved billions more in military and economic assistance to Ukraine before President-elect Donald Trump returns to office with a pledge to curtail aid and end the war. Since Russia’s invasion nearly three years ago, Congress has approved $175 billion in total assistance to Ukraine.
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Oleksandra Matviichuk: Russia wants to destroy completely Ukraine energy system and to make millions of Ukrainians to face the winter without heating, electricity, water, light and internet connection. But what I want to say, that due to the work of ordinary people who repair the civil infrastructure, we are able to meet this New Year Eve with light. And this is a bright symbol of Ukrainian resilience.
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We document how Russian troops destroying residential buildings, schools, churches, museums and hospitals. They’ve taken evacuation corridors. They’re torturing people in filtration camps. They’ve forcibly taken Ukrainian children to Russia. They’re abducting, robbing, raping and killing civilians in the occupied territories. And the entire U.N. system of peace and security can’t stop it. Russia uses war crimes as the method of warfare. Russia instrumentalized the pain. Russia used the pain as a tool how to break people’s resistance and to occupy the country.
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It were ordinary people who helped to survive under artillery fires. It were ordinary people who took people out from the ruined cities. It were ordinary people who broke through the encirclement to provide humanitarian aid. And you know what? Suddenly, it became obvious that ordinary people fighting for their freedom and human dignity are stronger than even the second army in the world.
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Putin started this war to occupy and to destroy the whole Ukraine and to go further, to attack next countries and to forcibly restore Russian Empire. And the problem is that after two-and-a-half years of large-scale invasion, Putin didn’t refuse from this goal, because human life is the cheapest resources in Russian state.
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Peace doesn’t come when country which was invaded stop resisting to Russian aggression. That’s not peace. That’s occupation. And occupation is horrible. It’s just the same war but in another form, because Russian occupation means torture, rapes, enforced disappearances, denial of your own identity, forcible adoption of your children, filtration camps and mass graves. And that’s why we have no other choice, because if we stop resisting to Russian aggression.
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I see that politicians in the European Union started to understand that their countries are safe only because Ukrainians still fighting. I see this even in our human rights work [...] when I interviewed people who survived Russian captivity, they told me that Russians see their future like this: At first, we’ll occupy Ukraine, and then, together with you, we will go to conquer in other countries. And the process of forcible mobilization, Ukrainian citizens to Russian army, all these years is going on in the occupied territories. So, once again, people in the European Union are safe only because Ukrainians are still fighting with Russian aggression and don’t let Putin to go further.
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I personally interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people who survived in Russian captivity. And they told me how they were beaten, raped, smashed into wooden boxes. Their fingers were cut. Their nails were torn away. Their nails were drilled. There were electrical shocks through their own genitalia. One woman told me how her eye was took out with a spoon. Because Russia ignore not just all provisions of international humanitarian law; Russia ignore all senses of humanity. So, that’s why yesterday prisoner swap, it was so important for all people in Ukraine, because we released more than 180 people who will celebrate this holiday with their families. And this is extremely important, as well as thousands and thousands prisoners of the war and illegally detained civilians, among them a lot of women, are still in Russian captivity.
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Victoria Roshchyna [an Ukrainian journalist] worked in occupied territories [in Ukraine], because she thought that this is her journalist obligation to be there with the people who were alone with the occupiers. She was just 27 years old, and she died in September in Russian prison after illegally arrest. And Russians, for several times, refused to return her body to her family, because her body probably can tell more about what happened with her, why she was dead.
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It’s not just a war between two states. This is a war between two systems: authoritarianism and democracy. And only success of Ukraine will provide a chance for democratic future for Russia itself, because Russian people, they can tolerate war criminal being their president, but Russian people will not tolerate loser war criminal.
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