Ukrainian Nobel Peace Prize winner works to hold Russia accountable for atrocities

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• Judy Woodruff:

  Today, for the third time in 24 hours, a military base inside Russia was attacked. Moscow blamed Ukraine for what appears to be the deepest strikes inside Russia since the war began.

  Meantime, the drive for accountability for Russian war crimes in Ukraine continues.

  In a moment, Nick Schifrin will speak with a leading Ukrainian human rights activist.

  But, first, he joins me here at the desk.

  So, Nick, hello.

  What do we know about these targets that were struck inside of Russia? And what about weapons used in those attacks?

• Nick Schifrin:

  The target today was an oil field near an airfield in southern Russia.

  The Russian governor said multiple drones struck it. You can see it on fire right there. And location was Kursk. That is about 50 miles from the Ukraine-Russia border. You see it right there. And what's significant there is the pattern and location of the attacks yesterday on a Russian base in Saratov. That is 372 miles from the Ukrainian border. That base hosts nuclear-capable long-range bombers that have bombed Ukraine.

  And the Russian base in Ryazan is 350 miles from the Ukraine border. Now, Ukraine is not taking public credit for these, but it is giving hints.

  Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov earlier today on Ukrainian TV joked that maybe Russian soldiers were smoking near flammable objects.

• Oleksiy Reznikov, Ukrainian Defense Minister (through translator):

  The enemy very often keeps violating safety rules. They smoke in different dangerous places. And, very often, we hear a word that is sweet to every Ukrainians', cotton, meaning that they had it. And it's a symbol of our victory.

• Nick Schifrin:

  The cotton, he said, reminds him of the smoke that appeared above the bases that were attacked inside Russia, so a little bit of a taunt, but neither confirming nor denying.

  The officials I have talked to say that Ukraine did conduct these attacks with drones that they essentially create with technology that they patch together, not with any kind of U.S. weapon. And, in fact, the Biden administration has refused Ukraine's requests to send them the longest-range best weapons that they have, for fear of escalation, for fear these kinds of attacks, frankly, could escalate the war.

  But, today, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was very clear. He said that these attacks inside Russia needed to be seen in context.

  Antony Blinken, U.S. Secretary of State: We have neither encouraged, nor enabled the Ukrainians to strike inside of Russia. But the important thing is to understand what Ukrainians are living through every day with the ongoing Russian aggression against their country.

• Nick Schifrin:

  And to give you a sense of how important these strikes are, British intelligence in the U.K. said today that the most — they are the most strategically significant failures of force protection since the war began.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Interesting.

  How are the Russians responding to all this?

• Nick Schifrin:

  Trying to create the same terror that they have been trying to create for months.

  The Russians launched dozens, nearly 100, according to one Ukrainian official, strikes on civilian homes, on the power and heating infrastructure, as they have been doing. Half of Kyiv had no electricity earlier today. Odessa had to rely fully on generators. And the Kremlin spokesman today even said that there was no prospects for peace, that Russia must achieve its stated goals.

  But, today, in Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was defiant. He's there visiting a city near the front line, giving Ukrainian soldiers awards. He said the country deserved to gain victory and deserved to gain justice.

  And one of the organizations helping Ukraine achieve justice is the Kyiv-based Center for Civil Liberties. This Saturday, it will receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway. Its head is Oleksandra Matviichuk.

  I spoke with her a few time ago, and began by asking her why a human rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize recipient was calling for more weapons.

• Oleksandra Matviichuk, Human Right Lawyer:

  I'm a human rights lawyer who had been applying the law to defend people for many years.

  But now I and other Ukrainian human rights defenders are doing our job in circumstances when the law doesn't work. And the whole U.N. system is enabled to stop Russian atrocities. We have no legal instrument even to release one single person from captivity.

  So, the truth is, if we want to stop murder and torture in occupied territories, we need weapons to liberate them.

• Nick Schifrin:

  When I was in liberated Kharkiv a few months ago, I saw Russian torture chambers. And Russian soldiers had left behind the devices of dehumanization, the wire that they used to strangle Ukrainians, the electricity that they used to torture Ukrainians.

  Have these crimes occurred nearly everywhere that Russia has occupied?

• Oleksandra Matviichuk:

  Yes, and for all these eight years. I have…

• Nick Schifrin:

  Since 2014, since the initial invasion.

• Oleksandra Matviichuk:

  Yes, when the war started, in 2014.

  I interviewed more 100 of people who survived captivity, and they told me horrible stories. They told me how they were beaten, how they were raped, how their fingers were cut, how their nails were turned away, their nails were drilled, they were tortured was electricity, compelled to write something with their own blood. One woman tell — told me how her eye were dug out with a spoon.

• Nick Schifrin:

  You shave been documenting these horrors, as you just described, for many years.

  Now you have created an initiative that has documented more than 24,000 alleged war crimes. How shocking is that scale?

• Oleksandra Matviichuk:

  It's an enormous amount of crimes, which means the enormous amount of pain, because we document not just violations of Geneva War Conventions.

  We document human pain, human pain when Russian troops deliberately shelling residential building, schools, churches, hospitals, attack vacation corridors, manage filtration camp system, organize forcible deportations, commit murder, rape, torture, abductions, and other kinds of offenses against civilians.

• Nick Schifrin:

  You and senior Ukrainian officials have consistently talked about creating a special tribunal in order to achieve justice.

  Why is the International Criminal Court not enough?

• Oleksandra Matviichuk:

  International Criminal Court has no jurisdiction over crimes as aggression is…

• Nick Schifrin:

  Crime of aggression.

• Oleksandra Matviichuk:

  Yes, we need additional international mechanism to prosecute for such kinds of crimes.

  But we need even more. We need international tribunal which can cover the crimes of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, because now we are faced with an accountability gap in Ukraine.

  What do I mean? The national system is overloaded with an extreme amount of crimes. And the International Criminal Court will limit its investigation only to several select cases. So, the question is, who will provide chance for justice for the hundreds of thousands of victims who will not be lucky to be selected by International Criminal Court?

• Nick Schifrin:

  But is the goal in a special tribunal, and specifically the crime of aggression, which the ICC does not have jurisdiction over, is the goal to hold senior officials to account, including Vladimir Putin himself?

• Oleksandra Matviichuk:

  Yes, Putin and rest of political senior leadership, as well as high military command.

• Nick Schifrin:

  For the first time, the European Commission has endorsed your call for a special tribunal.

  But the U.S. has still not endorsed a special tribunal. And there are officials I speak to here who are worried that it could take a long time to create a special tribunal from scratch and that it could dilute the work of the ICC.

  What do you say to those worries?

• Oleksandra Matviichuk:

  I believe in very interconnected, very complex and very quick world.

  OK, if, before, the international tribunals takes too much times, we have these lessons learned. Why we can't do it faster?

• Nick Schifrin:

  Meaning you want justice to be achieved during the war itself?

• Oleksandra Matviichuk:

  Yes, because why we look into the world through the prism of Nuremberg tribunal, when the Nazi war criminals were tried after Nazi regime had to collapse?

  Justice has to be independent on the magnitude of Putin's regime power.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Do you think the West has failed to hold Putin to account in the past, long before even 2014, for example, in Syria, Chechnya, et cetera?

• Oleksandra Matviichuk:

  I'm sure that all this hell which we now faced in Ukraine is a result of total impunity which Russian troops have in Chechnya, in Moldova, in Syria, in Mali, in Libya, in Georgia, in other countries of the world.

  They, like, have never been punished. Russians believe they can do whatever they want.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Just last weekend, we heard something from French President Emmanuel Macron. He said that the end of the war would require Russian security guarantees.

  Are you concerned the international community is more concerned in peace than in justice?

• Oleksandra Matviichuk:

  International community has to take truth and to understand that there will not be sustainable peace in our region without justice, because we speak about culture of impunity. We speak about situation when Russia, for decades, used war as a tool how to achieve geopolitical interests and war crimes the methods how to win the war.

• Nick Schifrin:

  And is it just for your region, or do you think that this is a global fight? How important is it for the fight overall against authoritarianism, do you think, that Ukraine find justice?

• Oleksandra Matviichuk:

  It's a global fight, because this war has a very distinct value dimension.

  And Putin, he try to convince not only Ukrainians, but the whole world, that rule of law, democracy, freedom are fake values, because, if they're genuine, why they not protect you during the war? And other authoritarian leaders of the world — in the world can be inspired by this example.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Oleksandra Matviichuk, thank you very much.

• Oleksandra Matviichuk:

  Thanks.