Nobel Laureate Investigating Russian War Crimes: Ukraine Needs U.S. Aid Now

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, SENIOR GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, now, with all eyes focused on tensions in the Middle East, the situation on the ground in Ukraine is dire. Overnight, a Russian attack in the Dnipropetrovsk region killed eight people, including two children. President Zelenskyy called his allies lifesavers for supplying resources to avoid more damage and urges the world not to forget their war. This as Congress’s long delayed assistance for Kyiv suddenly accelerates to the finish line, finally. Despite threats from hardline Republican lawmakers to oust him, House Speaker Mike Johnson is putting his multibillion-dollar aid package to a vote this Saturday.

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MIKE JOHNSON, U.S. HOUSE SPEAKER: I can make a selfish decision and do something that that’s different, but I’m doing here what I believe to be the right thing. I think providing lethal aid to Ukraine right now is critically important.

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GOLODRYGA: Our next guest is Ukrainian human rights lawyer Oleksandra Matviichuk and was awarded a Nobel prize for her work as head of the Center for Civil Liberties. She joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the importance of standing up to Russia.

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HARI SREENIVASAN, INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Bianna, thanks. Oleksandra Matviichuk, thank you so much for joining us. Since the war in Ukraine began, your organization has documented more than 68,000 instances of crimes you say have been committed by the Russians. These are human rights violations. Tell me, what are the types of things that you have documented?

OLEKSANDRA MATVIICHUK, HEAD OF THE CENTER OF LIBERTIES: Russian troops are deliberately shelling residential buildings, schools, churches, museums, and hospitals. They are attacking evacuation corridors. They are torturing people in filtration camps. They are forcibly deporting Ukrainian children to Russia. They are abducting, robbing, raping, and killing civilians in the occupied territories. So, such things we are documenting.

SREENIVASAN: And how do you verify this? Do you interview the survivors?

MATVIICHUK: We build national network of documentators and cover the whole country, which include occupied territories. We use different source of verification and gathering of information. We collect testimonies from the victims and the witness. We sent mobile groups to work on the occupied territories. We research and open data and visit the other verification. If something happened, for example, Russian rocket hit residential buildings, our local documentators are able to come to the place and to make their own photos and videos and speak with people.

SREENIVASAN: There’s a story that you talk about a young woman, 14-year- old named Sophia (ph) from Mariupol. What happened to her?

MATVIICHUK: This young girl together with her mother and her younger sister found themselves in the center of Russian shelling, and the air bombs was flown to the residential buildings, and, like, everything was destroyed. And she told to my colleagues that she tried to dig up her mother from the rubbish of presidential buildings in order to provide her breath. And she described very emotionally how it was, like the plane was in the sky and she was afraid that another bomb will appear, but she tried to help her mom. And the problem is, and the tragedy is that, unfortunately, her mom died. And she couldn’t manage to save her.

SREENIVASAN: And what happened next to Sophia (ph)?

MATVIICHUK: She was legally deported by Russian soldiers to the occupied territories and supposed then to be sent to Russia. But her elder sister came and took her. And this is, unfortunately, just exception. We have identified — I mean Ukrainian government, more than 19,000 Ukrainian children who were illegally deported to Russia, and only 400 from them were returned home.

SREENIVASAN: So, what happens to these 19,000 children?

MATVIICHUK: They were put in re-education camps, where Ukrainian children were told that they are not Ukrainian children, but Russian children. Some of them start to be quickly preparing for a forcible adoption, in the Russian adoptive families, and this is important to mention that according to Russian legislation, adoptive family can change not just the name, but place and date of birth. And why I emphasize on this because among these children are children with parents, with parents who were arrested by Russia, and they also are preparing for forcible adoption. And this is a very cynical situation because I can’t understand what in the hearts and minds of these people, because how it can be that your child is — have to be forced — forcible adopt.

SREENIVASAN: What purpose does this or would this serve a country like Russia to do this? What kind of an effect does it have to the Ukrainian war effort, to the people, to the culture?

MATVIICHUK: It’s a part of genocidal policy which Russia implicated against Ukraine. Just recently, Vladimir Putin provided an interview and he once again repeated genocidal claims that there are no Ukrainian nation, there is no Ukrainian culture, there is no Ukrainian language. And we, for 10 years, documented how these words implicated in horrible practice when Russian troops deliberately exterminate active local people, how Russian troops deliberately destroyed Ukrainian cultural heritage. And now, when they took our children and send them to Russia, it’s also this part of this genocidal policy because they want to bring these children up as Russians and eliminate their identity.

SREENIVASAN: And so, when you hear the stories of Sophia (ph) or you talk to and interview some of the survivors of these tragedies and atrocities and your team documents this day in and day out and you see the work that they’re doing, how do you process that?

MATVIICHUK: Frankly speaking, it’s not an easy question to answer because I wasn’t prepared for such scale of atrocities. Even me, a lawyer, with all my background, professional knowledge and field experience, it’s impossible. Because first and foremost, we are all human beings. And now, we are faced with unbelievable scale of war crimes. And Russia uses war crimes. The methods of fear. Russia attempts to break people resistance and occupy the country by the two — which I call the immense pain of civilian population. So, to be clear, we document not just violations of Geneva and (INAUDIBLE) conventions. We are documenting human pain.

SREENIVASAN: What is the forum where a country could be brought to justice?

MATVIICHUK: It’s a good question, because I started to ask to myself, for whom do we document all these crimes for? Because as a human rights lawyer, I found myself in a situation when the law doesn’t work. I will remind you that in 2022, the U.N. Court of Justice issued their decision and obliged Russia to withdraw Russian troops from Ukraine. And Russia ignored even the decision of U.N. Court of Justice. So, the whole U.N. system of peace and security can’t stop these atrocities. But as a human rights lawyer, I do believe that it’s temporary, and that’s why we are documenting these crimes so that sooner or later, all Russians who committed these crimes by their own hands, as well as Putin and top political leadership and high military command of the Russian State will be brought to justice. But before this time, we have to survive because — and that’s why I will be very honest, we need weapons to defend our country, to defend our people, and to defend our freedom. And now, we in situation when we lack of weapons because the military support in the United States Congress is blocked. So, I hope it will be solved in nearest days.

SREENIVASAN: Someone’s going to watch this conversation and say, this is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. This is somebody who works towards peace and here she is, she’s advocating for weaponry. She’s advocating for war in order to do what?

MATVIICHUK: Look, Ukrainians want peace much more than anyone else. But peace doesn’t come when country which was invaded stop fighting. That’s not peace. That’s occupation. And Russians killed unarmed. Occupation, it’s just another forms of the war, which become more invisible for international society. I know what I’m talking about because I documented war crimes for 10 years. Occupation means torture, sexual violence, forced disappearance, denial of your identity, forcible adoption of your own children, filtration camps, and mass graves. We are fighting for peace because there is no answer in the whole world how to stop Putin from this bloody war.

SREENIVASAN: You know, you said in part of your Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech that justice should not depend on the reliance of authoritarian regimes. Explain that. I mean, how do we develop a legal infrastructure that you like?

MATVIICHUK: Oh, yes. It’s a problem that we still look through the — to the world, through the lens of the Nuremberg Trials. Nuremberg Trials, it was a victorious trials, when Nazi criminals were tried only after Nazi regime had collapsed. And now, when I’m meeting with presidents, with representatives of governments and parliaments, I often hear when you win, you will have a justice. But we live in new century. Justice cannot wait. Justice must be independent of the fact when and how the war will end. We have to punish the leaders of the oppressive for regardless of the results of the war. This is our task in 21st century as a humankind. So, we have no filter. And this is my main message.

SREENIVASAN: So, we are in the middle of a conversation that’s happening in the United States right now. Congress is trying to figure out, for its own domestic reasons, it has taken quite some time to figure out whether it wants to give money to Ukraine. And you recently said about this, that the U.S. and its allies must give Ukraine everything it needs to repel Russian aggression. If we hesitate for too long, Russia will take more steps forward and developed democracies may be forced to pay the price with the lives of their own citizens. Explain.

MATVIICHUK: Russia is empire. Empire has a center but has no border. It means that if we do not be able to stop Putin in Ukraine, he will go further and will attack a next country. Now, they discussed on Russian TV publicly what the next country will be, Estonia or Poland? Which means that if it happened, if Putin succeed in Ukraine, United States of America will have to send their people to defend freedom in the Europe. And this means that the United States of America will pay the highest price, which you can just imagine.

SREENIVASAN: The organization that you work with, The Center for Civil Liberties, just this week the Russian ministry has declared that organization what they call undesirable, your group and two other human rights organizations. So, what does this mean? Does this mean that you are functionally unable to work in Russia?

MATVIICHUK: We work in Russia with the hands of our brief Russian human rights colleagues. And now, we have discussion how to make our work even more secretly, not to put our Russian colleague in additional danger, but they are in danger even regardless of this, because human rights organization in Russia is closed, our colleagues are labeled the foreign agent, part of them were forced to leave the country. Just a month ago, my friend, a colleague, 71-year-old Oleg Orlov, the head of Human Rights Center Memorial was jailed. But what I want to emphasize on this, when I ask my human rights colleagues in Russia how we can help you, because you are in very vulnerable situation. You face not just against Putin regime, but again, the majority of Russian people who unfortunately support this war, what we can do for you, they always responded, if you want to help us, please be successful. Because only success of Ukraine and military defeat of Russia provide a chance for democratic future of Russia itself. Not guarantee, there is no guarantee in our life, but it’s a luxury to have a chance.

SREENIVASAN: Just last year the International criminal court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Putin accusing him and hold, trying to hold him responsible for personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine. And I wonder, what should the rest of the world do when a third party like the ICC says something like that?

MATVIICHUK: If politician put their decision and make their decision only on economic interests or geopolitical interest or security concerns, and, and don’t take into account value, use of freedom and democracy, even if such politicians will benefit in short term, we will evade for catastrophe in long term. We have to return values into politics. It’s very, it’s very important because all the situation which we have for current moment, it’s results of such irresponsible behavior. Because for decades we told that Russia persecute their own journalists killed activists, disperse, peaceful demonstration, Russia commit horrible crimes in different kinds of different parts of the world. But well-developed democracies and they are politicians close their eyes for this fact. They continue to do business as usual with Russia shaking Putin’s hand and pipelines. And this lead to situation where Russia start to think that they can do whatever they want. And that’s why this arrest warrant of international criminal court is so important. It shows to this politicians that Putin is official recognized as the biggest child kidnapper in the world. And first and foremost, we are humans. And there are a lot of things which have no limitation in national borders and solidarity is one of such things. We need more bravery and more honesty in external policy of different countries because we are very interconnected. Our world is very interconnected.

SREENIVASAN: Right now, are you concerned that there was supposed to be a presidential election in Ukraine? And you know, Vlodymyr Zelenskyy has postponed that. He said essentially we should be focusing on the war right now. I mean, on the one hand he is vociferous about preserving democracy and on the other hand you see him postponing what’s a democratic process. I mean, is there an assurance somewhere that the Ukrainian people have that we have to deal with the war first and we can either elect him out of power or we’ll elect him to stay?

MATVIICHUK: President Zelensky has to follow constitution of Ukraine and constitution of Ukraine prohibited to conduct election during the war time, like many other constitutions in the, in the world because there are a lot of practical problems which has to be solved. How to provide the route towards, for the seven and a half of millions of people where we can find money, how to secure the whole electoral process when even international observers will not go to, to do their civil moratorium of the electoral process. How to provide opportunities for, to and secure the right vote for people in trenches. Like the most active part of Ukrainian society joined Ukraine and forces we have to save their rights to vote. So a lot of practical problems which have to be sold, but why I am look optimistic even during this difficult time for Ukrainian existence because I know that when you open any sociological survey, where Ukrainians were asked, what is the main value for you? They always put freedom on the first place in hierarchy of values.

SREENIVASAN: 2022, Nobel Laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk, thank you so much for joining us.

MATVIICHUK: Thank you very much.