Nobel Peace prize Oleksandra Matviichuk: ‘In Ukraine, unpunished evil grows’

On 21 September – coincidentally the International Day of Peace – we had the opportunity to talk to Oleksandra Matviichuk about the main issues surrounding the war in Ukraine and what will come next. Like most of the Ukrainians we met, she displayed a mixture of determination and serenity, refusing to indulge in self-pity for herself and her fellow citizens. She reminds us that for Ukrainians their attitude to Russia and the war is self-evident.

Voxeurop: Do women have a special role in Ukraine today?

Oleksandra Matviichuk: When I’m asked about the role of women in the war, I can’t answer very quickly, because I know thousands of fantastic women in different areas of society: women fighting in the Ukrainian armed forces, women making important political decisions, women documenting, women coordinating civil initiatives. Women are at the forefront of this fight for freedom and democracy, because courage has no gender. When the full-scale invasion began, Ukrainian people joined the territorial defence and the Ukrainian armed forces, and nobody was surprised that a man joined the Ukrainian armed forces, so why should we be surprised that more than 60,000 women joined the Ukrainian armed forces? There is no gender division in many things, such as bravery.

Today women can play any role they see fit in modern society, and that’s what makes Ukraine different from Russia: in Russia, women only play assigned roles in family and society, and men are dominant. Such cultural norms are a basis for an authoritarian regime, because it’s always this relationship between people that expresses how power can behave towards people. In Russia even domestic violence has been decriminalised. We as women have such an additional task in this war – which is not just a war between states, but a war between two systems – between authoritarianism and democracy: Authoritarianism versus democracy. We are fighting with Russia so that our daughters will never be in a situation where they have to prove to someone that they are also human beings. 

The Centre for Civil Liberties  which you head, is a co-nominee for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, along with Belarusian dissident Ales Bialiatski and Russian human rights NGO Memorial. How do you work for peace in the context of war, and what does peace mean for Ukrainians today?

Peace means a lot: Ukrainians want peace more than anyone else. But you can’t advocate peace. Peace will not come if the invaded country stops fighting: It won’t be peace, but occupation, and occupation is just another form of war. I know what I’m talking about because I’ve been documenting war crimes for nine years and I know that people living under occupation live in a grey zone. They have no means to defend their rights, their freedom, their property, their lives and their loved ones. Occupation is not just replacing one flag with another; when we talk about Russian occupation, it means forced disappearances, rape, torture, murder, denial of identity, forced deportations of Ukrainian children for adoption with the aim of re-educating them as Russians, filtration camps, forced mobilisation into the Russian army and mass graves. This is occupation; it’s not peace.

We have no moral right to abandon the Ukrainan people to torture and death under Russian occupation. They are our families, our friends, our colleagues, our fellow citizens and, above all, they are human beings. Their lives cannot be the subject of a political compromise.

Is it even possible to reach a peaceful settlement with Russia, as many, especially in the West, are suggesting that the Ukrainians should accept?

It’s wishful thinking with the current Russian government. Do the people who suggest this have any idea how to stop Vladimir Putin? Russia will not give up its desire to conquer the whole of Ukraine: as Putin himself has said, the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century, and these people respect only force. They see civilised dialogue as a sign of weakness. Russia is an empire, and as such it has no borders. When an empire has energy, it expands; when it does not, it waits for the moment when it has energy again to expand. We Ukrainians want lasting peace. That means living without fear of violence and having a long-term perspective. For eight years we have had the so-called Minsk agreements, and people were still dying on a regular basis. How has Russia used this time? It built up an army in the occupied Ukrainian territories. Russia withdrew, regrouped, then planned and launched its large-scale invasion. So we need a peace that is n…