Human rights defender Oleksandra (Lesya) Matviichuk’s statement at the official prize–giving ceremony of Democracy Defender Award-2016

I represent the civil initiative Euromaidan SOS that was created in response to brutal dispersal of peaceful student demonstration. We have brought together thousands of ordinary people to provide legal protection for protesters. Every day a large number of people passed through our care. People who were arrested, beaten, tortured, accused of trumped-up criminal cases, and later – the dead and the missing people.

For the second time in the last ten years, Ukrainian people rose to defend their choice to build a democratic state based on common values with European countries. We paid a rather high price for it.

After the fall of authoritarian regime, in order to stop democratic transformations in Ukraine Russia occupied Crimea and started a hybrid war in Donbas. Murders, abductions, tortures, sexual violence, human shields, political persecutions on the occupied territories – all this has become our reality.

Today we gather victims’ evidence and document these violations to present them for international justice. At the same time, we struggle to reform our police, courts and prosecutors, so in the future we are not facing a situation in where our government shoots unarmed demonstrators.

In this regard, I would like to share a few lessons that we have learned from these past events:

1. In many countries human rights activists aren’t just working for protection of human rights. These activists are fighting every day for human rights. Often it seems almost hopeless. However, we should do our work honestly. The results of our efforts can unexpectedly be achieved.

2. When people achieve the recognition of human rights from authorities, often in practice it means only one thing. No authorities but just civil society needs freedom of associations, the right to a fair trial, civil society oversight of police. This only means that human rights activists simply won new tasks for themselves. This is why the civil society should become an equal partner with the state authorities in the eyes of international organizations.
3. The so-called “Ukrainian crisis”, in fact, is a direct reflection of a global crisis in the post-war world system. This is a value crisis. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is often and openly questioned. International human rights law has become secondary. Civil activists, journalists, human rights defenders are persecuted and held in prisons in Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan etc. There is an ongoing fundamental change of ideologies, which, for decades, have been the basis for international organizations.

There is a great temptation to avoid solving difficult problems, hoping that they will just vanish. But the truth is that these problems are increasing. There are new gray areas with uncertain statuses appearing on the map. That is not only about the future of the OSCE and the Helsinki Accords. That is about the entire world where everything is interconnected and only the spread of freedom and human rights is making it safe.

Finding the solution to this crisis is our historic task. We must continue fighting for human dignity. Even if there is nothing left but words and our own example.

February 24, 2016, Vienna

Time to take responsibility.

Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, dear members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, citizens of Ukraine and citizens of the world.

This year, the entire Ukrainian nation was waiting for the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize laureates. We see this Prize as a recognition of the efforts of the Ukrainian people, who have bravely stood up to the attempts to destroy peaceful development of Europe, as well as a celebration of the work being done by human rights activists in order to prevent military threat for the entire world. We are proud of having Ukrainian language heard during the official ceremony for the first time in history.

We are receiving the Nobel Peace Prize during the war started by Russia. This war has been going on for eight years, 9 months and 21 days. For millions of people, such words as shelling, torture, deportation, filtration camps have become commonplace. But there are no words which can express the pain of a mother who lost her newborn son in a shelling of the maternity ward. A moment ago, she was caressing her baby, calling him by his name, breastfeeding him, inhaling his smell – and the next moment a Russian missile destroyed her entire universe. And now her beloved and longed-for baby lies in the smallest coffin in the world.

There are no available solutions for the challenges we and the whole world are facing now. People from different countries are also fighting for their rights and freedoms in extremely difficult circumstances. So, today I will at least try to ask the right questions so that we could start looking for these solutions.

First. How can we make human rights meaningful again?

Survivors of the World War II are no longer around. And the new generations began to take rights and freedoms for granted. Even in developed democracies, forces questioning the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are on the rise. But human rights cannot be upheld once and for all. The values of modern civilization must be protected.

Peace, progress and human rights are inextricably linked. A state that kills journalists, imprisons activists, or disperses peaceful demonstrations poses a threat not only to its citizens. Such a state poses a threat to the entire region and peace in the world as a whole. Therefore, the world must adequately respond to systemic violations. In political decision-making, human rights must be as important as economic benefits or security. This approach should be applied in foreign policy too.

Russia, that has been consistently destroying its own civil society, illustrates this very well. But the countries of the democratic world have long turned a blind eye to this. They continued to shake hands with the Russian leadership, build gas pipelines and conduct business as usual. For decades, Russian troops have been committing crimes in different countries. But they always got away with this. The world has not even adequately responded to the act of aggression and annexation of Crimea, which were the first such cases in post-war Europe. Russia believed that they could do whatever they want.

Now Russia is deliberately inflicting harm on civilians aiming to stop our resistance and occupy Ukraine. Russian troops intentionally destroy residential buildings, churches, schools, hospitals, shell evacuation corridors, put people in filtration camps, carry out forced deportations, kidnap, torture and kill people in the occupied territories.

The Russian people will be responsible for this disgraceful page of their history and their desire to forcefully restore the former empire.

Second. How to start calling a spade a spade?

People of Ukraine want peace more than anyone else in the world. But peace cannot be reached by country under attack laying down its arms. This would not be peace, but occupation. After the liberation of Bucha, we found a lot of civilians murdered in the streets and courtyards of their homes. These people were unarmed.

We must stop pretending deferred military threats are “political compromises”. The democratic world has grown accustomed to making concessions to dictatorships. And that is why the willingness of the Ukrainian people to resist Russian imperialism is so important. We will not leave people in the occupied territories to be killed and tortured. People’s lives cannot be a “political compromise”. Fighting for peace does not not mean yielding to pressure of the aggressor, it means protecting people from its cruelty.

In this war, we are fighting for freedom in every meaning of the word. And for it, we are paying the highest possible price. We, Ukrainian citizens of all nationalities, should not discuss our right to a sovereign and independent Ukrainian state and development of the Ukrainian language and culture. As human beings, we do not need an approval of our right to determine our own identity and make our own democratic choices. Crimean Tatars and other indigenous peoples should not prove their right to live freely in their native land in Crimea.

Our today’s fight is paramount: it shapes the future of Ukraine. We want our post-war country to let us build not some shaky structures, but stable democratic institutions. Our values matter most not when it’s easy to embody them, but when it’s really hard. We must not become a mirror of the aggressor state.

This is not a war between two states, it is a war of two systems – authoritarianism and democracy. We are fighting for the opportunity to build a state in which everyone’s rights are protected, authorities are accountable, courts are independent, and the police do not beat peaceful student demonstrations in the central square of the capital.

On the way to the European family, we have to overcome the trauma of war and its associated risks, and affirm the choice of the Ukrainian people determined by the Revolution of Dignity.

Third. How to ensure peace for people around the world?

The international system of peace and security does not work anymore. Crimean Tatar Server Mustafayev as well as many others are put in Russian prisons because of their human rights work. For a long time, we used law to protect human rights, but now we do not have any legal mechanisms to stop Russian atrocities. So many of the human rights activists were compelled to defend what they believe in with arms in their hands. For example, my friend Maksym Butkevych, who is now in Russian captivity. He and other Ukrainian prisoners of war, as well as all detained civilians, must be released.

The UN system, created after the World War II by its winners, provides for some unjustified indulgences for individual countries. If we don’t want to live in the world where rules are set by states with stronger military capabilities, this has to be changed.

We have to start reforming the international system to protect people from wars and authoritarian regimes. We need effective guarantees of security and respect for human rights for citizens of all states regardless of their participation in military alliances, military capability or economic power. This new system should have human rights at its core.

And the responsibility for this lies not only with politicians. Politicians are tempted to avoid looking for complex strategies, which require a lot of time. They often act as if global challenges would disappear by themselves. But the truth is that they only get worse. We, people who want to live in peace, should tell politicians that we need a new architecture of the world order.

We may not have political tools, but we still have our words and our position. Ordinary people have much more influence than they think they do. Voices of millions of people from different countries can change world history faster than interventions of the UN.

Fourth. How to ensure justice for those affected by the war?

Dictators are afraid that the idea of freedom will prevail. This is why Russia is trying to convince the whole world that the rule of law, human rights and democracy are fake values. Because they do not protect anyone in this war.

Yes, the law doesn’t work right now. But we do not think it is forever. We have to break this impunity cycle and change the approach to justice for war crimes. A lasting peace that gives freedom from fear and hope for a better future is impossible without justice.

We still see the world through the lens of the Nuremberg Tribunal, where war criminals were convicted only after the fall of the Nazi regime. But justice should not depend on resilience of authoritarian regimes. We live in a new century after all. Justice cannot wait.

We need to bridge the responsibility gap and make justice possible for all the affected people. When the national system is overloaded with the war crimes. When the International Criminal Court can try just a few selected cases or has no jurisdiction at all.

War turns people into numbers. We have to reclaim the names of all victims of war crimes. Regardless of who they are, their social status, type of crime they have suffered, and whether the media and society are interested in their cases. Because anyone’s life is priceless.

Law is a living continuously evolving matter. We have to establish an international tribunal and bring Putin, Lukashenko and other war criminals to justice. Yes, this is a bold step. But we have to prove that the rule of law does work, and justice does exist, even if they are delayed.

Fifth. How can global solidarity become our passion?

Our world has become very complex and interconnected. Right now, people in Iran are fighting for their freedom. People in China are resisting the digital dictatorship. People in Somalia are bringing child soldiers back to peaceful life. They know better than anyone what it means to be human and stand up for human dignity. Our future depends on their success. We are responsible for everything that happens in the world.

Human rights require a certain mindset, a specific perception of the world that determines our thinking and behavior. Human rights become less relevant if their protection is left only to lawyers and diplomats. So, it is not enough to pass the right laws or create formal institutions. Societal values will always prevail.

This means that we need a new humanist movement that would work with meanings, educate people, build grass-root support and engage people in the protection of rights and freedoms. This movement should unite intellectuals and activists from different countries, because the ideas of freedom and human rights are universal and have no state borders.

This will enable us to create a demand for solutions and jointly overcome global challenges – wars, inequality, attacks on privacy, rising authoritarianism, climate change, etc. This way we can make this world a safer place.

We do not want our children to go through wars and suffering. So, as parents we have to assume the responsibility and act, not to shift it on our children. Humanity has a chance to overcome global crises and build a new philosophy of life.

It’s time to assume the responsibility. We don’t know how much of the time we still have.

And since this Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony takes place during the war, I will allow myself to reach out to people around the world and call for solidarity. You don’t have to be Ukrainians to support Ukraine. It is enough just to be humans.

Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Center for Civil Liberties

I am in Kyiv now, which is being shelled by the Russian military for more than a month. I see that Helsinki agreements lay in ruins – just as Mariupol, Chernihiv and Kharkiv. Bombs fall on residential buildings, hospitals, schools. Millions of Ukrainians left their homes. Thousands of people were killed. If the war is not stopped in the very near future, it will surpass the Balkan wars in terms of the number of victims and destruction. This is the most difficult challenge for Europe since the Second World War. This is a threat not only to Ukrainian sovereignty, but also to the very foundations of international law, collective security, and human rights.

War undermines the meaning of life. We have resumed the work of the Euromaidan SOS and are recording violations of international humanitarian law. A coalition of human rights organizations “Tribunal for Putin” documents attacks on civilians and civilian objects, deliberate killings, torture and ill-treatment, enforced disappearances, and other offenses under the Rome Statute. Such actions are not justified by any military necessity. Russia is simply using war crimes as a method of warfare.

War kills humanity and we must do everything to ensure that public sentiment and the actions of the authorities remain within the boundaries of humanitarian law. During martial law the Ukrainian authorities impose restrictions, but for now there is room for the press, parliamentary control and independent civic life. In Russia, after the blocking of the last independent media and the criminalization of anti-war statements, there is simply no space for public expression of independent opinions. All the more important are the voices against the war that we continue to hear from Russia.

War destroys all the usual modalities of life and work. People in destroyed cities sit for weeks in bomb shelters without water, electricity, medical care. During all this time, Russia has agreed with the International Red Cross on one single humanitarian corridor from Sumy. Instead, Russia illegally moves thousands of Ukrainians to its territory. And now the question is how can people without documents cross back the border. We must find additional mechanisms to control the situation with refugees, humanitarian corridors, prisoners of war, the persecution of the population in the occupied territories, and so on.

What is the role of the OSCE in all this as an international organization tasked with security in Europe? We have to be honest: it has failed to prevent a large-scale war and to fulfill its mandate. And it is important to understand why. 

First. We can no longer afford to separate and marginalize the human dimension.  The state that systemically disregards human rights obligations, persecutes lawyers, journalists, human rights defenders is a security threat for the entire region. 

Second. The connection between peace, progress and human rights is inextricable. That was evident for the Soviet dissidents in the Helsinki movement. Human rights and the rule of law are a matter of common security – just as important as the military potential or economic stability.

Third. Only the strong civil society matters can resist launching an aggressive war. You cannot stop the aggressor with reports or litigation. Human Rights are lost if left to diplomats, lawyers or experts. Human Rights education and awareness among the population should become a priority. Just as building ties and investing into the international antiwar and international human rights movement.

Militaries are speaking now, because civil society voices have not been heard before. Maybe we were heard at the HDIM, but not at the Permanent Council, not in the rooms where decisions are made by the people in power. If you do not want the power to stay only with those who have the stronger military, civil society voices need much more support.

Some questions that we want to ask now:

1. Can the OSCE learn from the past? Even before the war, breaches of major human rights obligations for Russia or for Belarus were not an aberration, but a policy: the one that prepared the ground for the military aggression. 
2. Russia with the support of Belarus has committed a crime of aggression. Its military forces continue to commit war crimes. Can the OSCE be a part of documenting them? 
3. Will the OSCE ensure international presence and monitoring in war zones, occupied cities and during evacuations of civilians? Can the OSCE mission revise its mandate and restore the work in the field?
4. Russia and Ukraine have made it illegal to publish data on deaths outside of “official sources”. But the dead are not just data, they have names. Can the OSCE publish official data on casualties and work on verifying it? 
5. In Russia there are instances of conscripts being sent to the battlefield, coercion to participate in hostilities, false or lacking information to relatives, problems with conscientious objection to military service. Does the OSCE have any role to play in addressing those issues?
6. And already now, along with responding to the urgent challenges of war, we need to think about a new security architecture in Europe, which will create guarantees for all countries and their citizens, regardless of participation or non-participation in military blocs, regardless of the strength of their military. A reboot of the Helsinki process is needed, in which human rights must finally take center stage.

We don’t expect to get all the answers now. But we demand that you look for answers. We don’t need any more statements of concern or condemnation. We need concrete actions.

We are dying, but we are not giving up. For more than a month we are paying an enormous price simply for the right to a democratic choice. For the right to live and build a country where everyone’s rights are protected, the judiciary is independent, the government is accountable, and the police does not disperse peaceful demonstrations.

History is being written before our eyes. The countries participating in the Helsinki Accord need to step out of their comfort zone and take necessary steps to stop Putin and end this war in Europe – without requiring Ukraine to give up our democratic choice and without sacrificing our values.

After all, we are now fighting for your and our freedom. За нашу и вашу свободу.

And we can only do it collectively. As Ukrainians, as Europeans, as human rights defenders, as people.   

When you know history, it is impossible to idealize. The 20^th century brought two devastating world wars, terrible colonial wars, millions of deaths, and the complete dehumanization of humankind, which reached its most concrete form in the Holocaust and Nazi concentration camps. The horrific lessons of the past demanded decisive action. Responsibility for what had been perpetrated was codified in the slogan ‘Never again.’ Governments created the United Nations system and signed international agreements. The Schuman Declaration inaugurated a unified European project. The idea that every person is free and equal in dignity and rights came to characterize the new postwar humanism.

But evil cannot be vanquished once and for all. Each day we make a choice. And democracy, the rule of law, and human rights were realized in practice in only part of Europe. Meanwhile the totalitarian Soviet Gulag was never condemned or punished. There has been no accountability. And thus evil keeps coming back: the Srebrenica massacre; the destruction of Grozny, a city of half a million people; the Russian bombardment of Aleppo; the firebombing of Mariupol and the bodies of people killed on the streets of Bucha.

Now, in the 21^st century, how will we defend human beings, their dignity, their rights, and their freedom? Can we rely on the law—or do only weapons matter?

I pose these questions not only as the citizen of a country that is defending itself against Russian military aggression. I pose these questions as a citizen of Europe.

Europe must respond to the challenges of today’s world. Europe must fulfill its role in a globalized world that is seeing a standoff between authoritarianism and democracy, interests and values, might and law, quick profits and long-term perspectives. It is the determination to act that gives a society a future.

The Europe That Succeeded

The European Coal and Steel Community was not only intended to provide a shared foundation for economic development. The efforts of those who worked to build a shared European project brought solidarity to countries whose relations had long been clouded by bloody conflicts. The European Union was able to overcome that history and ensure peaceful relations among member states. Governments’ ongoing efforts to uphold democracy, the rule of law, and human rights brought decades of stable growth. This is the Europe that succeeded in avoiding war.

The Europe that succeeded continues down a difficult path towards finding itself. It must learn to see the toxic legacy of its own colonial past, even if it is now wrapped in newfound good intentions. Its task lies in building unity, but not uniformity; ensuring integrity, but not homogeneity. It must find a way to build solidarity out of diversity. It must not allow the ideas of authoritarianism and imperialism to take hold among new generations.

The generations that lived through the Second World War are almost gone. The generations that came after have not been forced to shed their own blood. They inherited the values of democracy from their parents. And they began to take rights and freedom as a given. People behave increasingly not as the bearers of these values, but as their consumers. They have begun to understand freedom as the choice between types of cheese at the supermarket. And so they are ready to trade freedom for economic gain, for promises of security, and for personal comfort. It should come as no surprise that in developed democracies we see populist forces gaining strength, forces that cast doubt on the foundational principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Our world has become fast-paced, complex, and interconnected. Technological development, climate change, invasions of privacy, growing inequality, the devaluation of knowledge and expertise, and other global challenges demand answers that cannot be found in the past. Decades of relative comfort and a growing desire for simple solutions changed the optics of developed democracies. They no longer realize that peace in Europe cannot be preserved without efforts equal to the level of the threat that is posed.

The European Union does not encompass all of Europe. The EU is the part of Europe that managed to take the principle that peace, progress, and human rights are indelibly linked, and put it into practice. And then it found itself faced with the challenge of stagnation. The Europe that succeeded should support other countries’ movement towards European values. In an ever-changing world, it is open systems and transformational cultures that survive. And walls and borders will not save us from global challenges. To stop moving forward is to perish.

The current situation depends not only on the decisions and actions of the Europe that succeeded, but also on its surroundings. It is one thing to be surrounded by countries that have also set the values of democracy, rule of law, and human rights as their guiding lights. It is an entirely different matter to be surrounded by countries who see these values as inimical. Once they are strong enough, they will seek to destroy you.

For a long time, the Europe that succeeded failed to take responsibility towards other countries in the region and made it possible for authoritarian regimes to become entrenched. This Europe forgot that states that kill journalists, imprison activists, and break up peaceful protests pose a danger not only to their own citizens. Such states are a threat to the entire region and indeed the entire world. Europe needed to respond to systematic violations of human rights. Human rights should play no less central a role in political decision-making than economic gain or security. This applies to foreign policy as well.

One clear example is Russia, which destroyed its own civil society step by step. But for a long time, the developed democracies turned a blind eye to this. They continued to shake hands with the Russian leadership, building gas pipelines and carrying on business as usual. For decades Russian troops committed crimes in multiple countries. But there were no consequences. The world scarcely blinked at the annexation of Crimea by military force, which was unprecedented in post-war Europe. Russia believed that it could do whatever it wanted.

The Europe That Failed

In February 2014 Russia began a war against Ukraine, occupying the Crimean Peninsula and part of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. This was just after the Revolution of Dignity had ended in Ukraine. Millions of people had bravely stood up against a corrupt authoritarian regime. They took to the streets across the entire country, demanding that the regime continue moving towards Europe, towards genuine democratic values. They fought for the right to build a state in which the rights of each person are protected, in which the authorities are held accountable, in which the courts are independent, and in which the police do not beat peaceful student demonstrators.

And some of them paid the ultimate price for this. The police shot more than one hundred peaceful demonstrators in the center of the nation’s capital. People died under the flags of Ukraine and the European Union.

When the authoritarian regime fell, Ukraine got its chance for democratic transformation. And to stop Ukraine’s progress towards genuine democracy, Russia invaded. Russia began this war in February 2014, and then in February 2022 it expanded it into a full-scale invasion. Because it is not NATO that Putin fears, it is democracy. Dictators fear the idea of freedom.

Now Russia seeks to break Ukraine’s resistance and occupy the country by inflicting maximum pain on the civilian population. Russian forces are deliberately targeting residential buildings, churches, schools, museums, and hospitals. They are shooting at evacuation corridors. They are imprisoning people in filtration camps. They are forcibly deporting Ukrainians. They are kidnapping, torturing, and murdering people in the occupied territories. Europe failed to stop this.

This is a war of values. Russia is seeking to convince the Ukrainian nation that its choice in favor of European integration was a mistake. Russia is seeking to convince the entire world that democracy, the rule of law, and human rights are fake, that they are false values. Because in wartime they do not protect anyone. Russia is seeking to prove that a state with a powerful military and nuclear weapons can dictate the rules of the game to the entire international community and can even change internationally recognized borders.

So this is not a war between two countries, it is a war between two systems—tyranny and democracy. The war is already here. People only begin to understand this when the bombs are falling on their heads, but this war has dimensions other than the military one: it is an economic war, an information war, a war of values. Whether we are brave enough to admit it or not, this war has long since crossed the borders of the European Union.

Russia has declared war on Europe. Russia is fighting against the values that are Europe’s hallmark.

Europe must take responsibility. Democracy, the rule of law, and human rights cannot be fought for and won once and for all. The values of modern civilization must be defended. We have to fight for them.

The Europe That Is Afraid

Europe does not know how to stop the war. Some voices repeatedly call on Ukraine to accept peace.

People in Ukraine want peace more than anyone else. But peace does not come when the country that was attacked lays down its weapons. That’s not peace, that’s occupation. And occupation is just war in another form.

Russia has introduced a reign of terror on the occupied territories, to keep them under control. This means that Russian troops and special forces exterminate local leaders—mayors, civil society activists, journalists, volunteers, priests, and artists. Without regard for age, sex, or health. People have no chance to defend their freedom, their property, their lives, and the lives of their loved ones.

Occupation is not a matter of exchanging the flag of one state for that of another. Occupation brings torture, deportation, forced adoption, denial of identity, filtration camps, mass graves.

In one of these mass graves, in the liberated Kharkiv region, under marker number 319 the body of Volodymyr Vakulenko was found. Volodymyr was a children’s author. He wrote wonderful stories for children and entire generations grew up on his books. During the Russian occupation, Volodymyr disappeared. His family hoped until the very end that he was alive, that he was in Russian captivity, like thousands of other people. It is hard for them to accept the forensic results that identified his body.

Sustainable peace means the freedom to live without fear, the freedom to make plans for the future. We need to stop disguising military threats as “political compromises.” Calls for Ukraine to stop defending itself just to satisfy Russia’s imperial appetites are not merely misguided. They are immoral.

People cannot be abandoned in the occupied territories to face death and torture. People’s lives cannot be a “political compromise.” Fighting for peace means not succumbing to pressure from the aggressor, it means defending people from its cruelty.

Russia is a modern-day empire. The imprisoned peoples of Belarus, Chechnya, Dagestan, Tatarstan, Yakutiia, and others endure forced russification, the expropriation of natural resources, and prohibitions on their own language and culture. They are forced to give up their identity. Empire has a center, but it has no borders. Empire always seeks to expand. If Russia is not stopped in Ukraine, it will go further.

This is not one person’s war. It is a war waged by a nation whose longing to regain “Russian greatness” has robbed it of the ability to distinguish between good and evil. So they rejoice over capturing Ukrainian territories. So they denounce each other. 12-year-old Masha Moskalyova drew an anti-war picture at school. Someone informed the authorities and now her father is in prison and she is in an orphanage.

The Russian people will bear responsibility for this shameful page in their history and for seeking to resurrect their former empire by force. Being aware of this responsibility brings honest people to take a stand against evil and call things by their names, even when it goes against prevailing public opinion. In Russia today there are very, very few of these people, but it is precisely thanks to their courage that Russians will never be able to say that they did not know.

Since the full-scale invasion began, Ukraine has withstood thanks to the readiness of the people of Ukraine to defend freedom and democracy, but also thanks to the support of developed democracies. They said, “Let’s help Ukraine not lose.” Now they say, “We’re with you as long as it takes.” But the paradigm needs to be changed. Rather than helping Ukraine not to lose, these states need to think and act in ways that help Ukraine win. Quickly.

The Europe that is afraid is tempted to avoid tough decisions. Responsible decisions. The Europe that is afraid behaves as if global challenges will somehow just disappear one day. But in reality, they are only getting worse. We are just wasting time.

The Europe with a Future

War turns people into numbers. The scale of war crimes grows so fast that it is simply impossible to tell everyone’s stories. But I will tell you one. The story of Svitlana, who lost her entire family when a Russian missile hit her building.

“I heard them dying. My husband was breathing heavily, straining as if he was trying to throw the rubble off of himself, but he couldn’t. At some point he just went still. My grandmother and Zhenya died instantly. I heard my daughter crying. Then she also went quiet. As for my son, my mother told me that he called for me several times and then… nothing.”

As long as the military dimension of this war is confined within the borders of Ukraine, the Europe that succeeded can turn off the news of war crimes. They can avoid looking at the horrifying photos and videos. Millions of people in Ukraine cannot do this. We cannot just turn off the war. This horror is now our life.

People are not numbers. We must ensure justice for all people, regardless of who they are, regardless of their social status, regardless of the type of crime and violence they endured, regardless of whether foreign media and international organizations take an interest in their fate. We must give people back their names. And their human dignity. Because every person’s life matters.

We still view the world through the lens of the Nuremburg trials, where war criminals were convicted only after the Nazi regime had fallen. But justice should not depend on the durability of authoritarian regimes. After all, we live in a new century. Justice should not wait.

It is up to us to break this cycle of impunity and change our approach to justice for war crimes. We must create an international tribunal and bring Putin, Lukashenka, and other war criminals to justice. Yes, this is a bold step. But we must demonstrate that democracy is effective, that the rule of law works, and that justice prevails – even when it is delayed.

This is a job for the Europe that determines its own future. To be European means to demonstrate solidarity in this fight for the values of democracy, rule of law, and human rights. Not striking a pose, but taking an active part.

It is not only a question of how we will protect human beings in the 21^st century. Thanks to its multiculturalism and its complex history, Europe has the potential to rethink what humanism means in an era of rapid technological progress, and to give new dimensions to the meaning of humanity.

The Europe that succeeded can help build a world that succeeds. Europe can play a key role in creating an international system of cooperation that brings together developed democracies and states that are on the path to democracy. This union should be determined not by a shared past, economic development, or geographical continent, but by common values and attitudes.

Because human rights are about a way of thinking, about a particular paradigm of perceiving the world, that determines how a person thinks and acts. So it is not enough to pass the right laws or create formal institutions. A society’s values are stronger than any laws or institutions.

We need a new humanistic movement that will work with society on the level of meaning, which will focus on education, which will shape mass support and inspire people to defend rights and freedoms. This movement should bring together intellectuals and civil societies from many countries, since the ideas of freedom and human rights are universal.

When the law temporarily fails, and we cannot rely on it, we can still always rely on people. Even if we do not have the political tools, our word and commitments always remain. Ordinary people have much more power than they themselves realize. The voice of millions of people in many countries can change the world faster than any intervention by the United Nations.

Our future is undetermined and unguaranteed. 21^st century Europe can become a world of humanism, or it can again shock the world with crimes of unprecedented brutality. Europe bears a shared responsibility to respond to global challenges and embark on a new path of mutual understanding.

Europe is less about geography than about the values of modern society. We live in a world where values have no national borders. And only by spreading the idea of freedom can we make our world secure.

Never Again and the war

I am a human rights lawyer. For many years, I have used the law to protect people and human dignity. Now, I find myself in a situation where the law doesn’t work.

We are documenting how Russian troops shell homes, schools, playgrounds, museums, and hospitals. They are imprisoning and torturing people in filtration camps. They are taking children from their parents and forcibly deporting them to Russia. They ban Ukrainian language and culture. They are kidnapping, robbing, raping, and killing people in the occupied territories. And the UN, like the entire international peace and security system, cannot stop it.

While the war turns people into numbers, we give people back their names. Because people are not numbers, and life of each person matters.

But human life has no value for Russia. Russia uses war crimes as a method of warfare. The Russians use violence of such intensity that the only way to escape is to submit and identify with the aggressor. Russia deliberately inflicts pain on the civilian population to break the resistance of the people, paralyze the will for freedom, and take over the country. In the last three years alone, we have documented more than 84,000 episodes of war crimes.

The most torturous to document are the kids’ stories. Let me tell you one of them. It is the story of 10-year-old Andrii from the city of Brovary near Kyiv. When the Russians began bombing the city in the first days of the full-scale invasion, his parents grabbed their child, documents, and some hastily gathered belongings to get away from the areas that the Russian army was storming. On the way, they encountered a line of Russian tanks. An armored personnel carrier hit and ran over the civilian car. Andrii remembers that his father was already dead. But his mother, sitting beside him in the back seat, remained alive. A minute later, someone forcefully pulled him out of the car and threw him on the road. The Russians fired at the gas tank again. This 10-year-old boy told my colleague how his parents burned to death in the car in front of him.

There is no justification for such actions. Just as there was no legal reason for it. Just as there was no military necessity. Russians did these awful things simply because they could.

The slogan ‘never again’ is outdated and no longer reflects reality. Evil is back, and it is trying to reestablish itself in our part of the world. And as a human rights lawyer, I would like to ask a simple question:

How are we, those living in the 21st century, going to protect people, their lives, their freedom, and their human dignity? Can we rely on the law? Or is brute force the only way?

The answer to this question will not only determine the fate of people in Ukraine, Iran, Sudan, Myanmar, Venezuela, or Nicaragua. The answer to this question will shape our common future.

Never again vs we can do it again

It is hard to idealize history when you know it well. The twentieth century brought two devastating world wars, horrific colonial wars, millions of deaths, and the total dehumanization of human beings symbolized by the Holocaust and the Nazi concentration camps. The terrible lessons of the past forced us to take decisive action. Responsibility for the past was redefined in the slogan ‘never again.’ Leaders created the UN system and signed international conventions. The Schuman Declaration marked the beginning of a unified European project. The idea that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights became a new postwar humanism.

However, while the end of the Second World War marked the victory of good over evil for Western societies, for Central and Eastern Europe, it was the victory of one evil over another. While Nazi war criminals were tried at the Nuremberg Tribunal, the Soviet totalitarian Gulag was never convicted or punished. When the whole world remembers those who died in Second World War, saying ‘Never again,’ Russia celebrates the day of victory, exclaiming ‘We can do it again.’

Human rights, progress, and peace are inextricably linked. States that grossly violate human rights pose a threat not only to their own citizens but also to the peace and security of the world as a whole. These would seem to be well-known and hard-won lessons of history. However, for decades, the world has turned a blind eye to what Russia is doing.

Putin has been gradually destroying Russian civil society, killing journalists, imprisoning activists, and breaking up peaceful demonstrations. Russian troops have committed heinous crimes in Chechnya, Moldova, Georgia, Mali, Libya, and Syria. Russia has never been punished. Putin is convinced he can do whatever he wants.

A new ‘axis of evil’ is forming before our eyes. China is helping Russia evade sanctions and import technology. Iran supplies missiles and drones. North Korea is sending its soldiers to war. All of these regimes have something in common. All of these regimes that have seized power in their countries have the same vision of what a human being is. They see people as objects to be controlled and deny them freedom.

Freedom is not about articles in international conventions. Without freedom, there is not even love. Unfreedom prevents people from voting for whom they want, saying what they think, loving whom their hearts tell them, and choosing which God to pray to. But if the leader orders one’s mother to be tortured, the people of North Korea will obey. They have been born and raised in captivity for generations. No wonder no foreigner has ever seen a cemetery in North Korea. Only love does not fade away. It needs space to be with your loved ones, at least in your mind. In North Korea, human life isn’t worth much. Their world is not only authoritarian, it is anti-human.

What matters is not the name but the place that the ideology you support gives to two things: human freedom and violence against human beings. It doesn’t matter whether that system of ideas is on the right or the left of the spectrum, or how it positions itself, or who its leaders are, or even whether you like its rhetoric about protecting workers’ rights or family values or preserving national culture, or anti-colonial appeals, or anything else that resonates with you.

Authoritarian regimes always have the same answer to the question of the place of human freedom and violence against people. For them, freedom is a threat, and violence is a method. And this should be a stopping factor, no matter how righteous their goals are. Despite the difference in the ideological spectrum, this leads to the same results. After all, the Second World War was started in 1939 by the left-wing Soviet Union and the right-wing Third Reich.

Never again and the international system

I don’t know what historians will call this historic period in the future, but the international peace and security system based on the UN Charter and international law is collapsing before our eyes. The UN is faltering and reproducing ritual movements. The Security Council is paralyzed. International principles such as the non-use of force, the inviolability of state borders, and respect for territorial integrity are being openly questioned. Yet, it was the denial of these principles in the last century that led to the Second World War.

We live in turbulent times. Fires break out more frequently in different parts of the world because the wiring is faulty, and sparks fly everywhere. The international order has been destroyed, and it will take a lot of effort to restore it.

It seems that democracies are not ready for this responsibility. The generations that remembered the lessons of the Second World War are gone. The current generations have inherited democracy from their parents. They have begun to take freedom and security for granted. They question the meaning of the Declaration of Human Rights. They have become consumers of values. People understand freedom as choosing between different cheeses in a supermarket. And so, they are willing to trade freedom for populist promises, economic benefits, the illusion of security, and, above all, their comfort.

I am truly sorry, but the decades of relative peace and sustainable development are over, even for Western societies, let alone for those parts of the world that have never had that luxury. It is impossible to build a paradise, even if you are an island separated by oceans when part of the world is being bloodied by mass violence. The decades of freedom that marked the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union are over. Global challenges are on our doorstep.

On top of that, we live in a world of rapidly developing new technologies. People spend more and more time in virtual space, polluted with fakes and disinformation. As a result, people lose the ability to distinguish between truth and lies. They become vulnerable to outside manipulation. Now, the residents of a small community no longer have a shared sense of reality. Without a shared sense of reality, people are unable to act together. Without common action, how can we address these global challenges?

Human nature is unchanging; if reality frightens us, we will deny it. We will extract from reality those fragments that confirm our view of the world, categorically rejecting everything that does not fit into it. We will also demand easy and quick solutions to return to the status quo, and we will vote for the politicians who promise us these.

You can treat a runny nose with sit-ups: this treatment at least will not harm your health. But when it comes to cancer, the cost of simple solutions and delaying treatment will be high.

I will say this: the collapse of the international order was preceded by an ethical crisis. We began to interpret the slogan ‘never again’ in different ways.

Never again and the ethical crisis

For Ukrainians, ‘never again’ literally means this. We will not tolerate evil, even if it is many times greater than our capacity. We will resist evil, saying ‘never again’ to occupation, to concentration camps, to the destruction of entire nations, to murder and torture. We will fight for the slightest chance for our children to have the freedom to live without fear of violence and to shape their future. For Ukrainians, ‘never again’ is not just a word. We have proved it on the battlefield.

However, for many people in Western societies, ‘never again’ has come to mean that we will never again pay a high price for our freedom. Even when our lives are at stake, we are no longer willing to risk them. We will compromise with evil – shaking hands with Putin, coming to military parades on Red Square, building gas pipelines, doing business as usual.

We will say that we are for peace. And even though we do not know how to stop Russia, we will demand that aid to Ukraine be stopped. We will call the right to self-defense and resistance to Russian aggression ‘prolonging the war.’ We will normalize evil. We will try to negotiate with it. We will leave millions of people in the gray zone so that all these years, human rights lawyers will document abductions, torture, rape, forced adoption of Ukrainian children, erasure of Ukrainian identity, filtration camps, and mass graves. Anything the evil did not affect us and did not spread.

But unpunished evil grows. Russia is an empire. And an empire has a center but no borders. An empire always seeks to expand. The very existence of the free world is always a threat to authoritarian regimes. There is no compromise here. The idea of freedom can spread beyond their borders. And then they will lose all power.

People who think only of their comfort have a typical horizon problem. They call themselves pragmatists. They want to benefit here and now. They do not care about human values. But if you expect the future on a credit card, do not forget: sooner or later, you will have to pay back the loan with interest.

Learn from our mistakes. Russian tanks are coming for cheap Russian gas bills. After the occupation of Crimea and Donbas, some Ukrainians recovered from the shock and turned the war off from the news like a switch on a TV remote. The war was still scary, but it was far away. People wanted to live a quiet life. They avoided taking responsibility. But then came the day when no one could turn off the war on the TV, and all that was left was to grab their children, documents, and some hastily gathered belongings and pray that the Russian tanks would not come across the street.

Never again and the rule of force
Putin’s reason for starting this war was not just to occupy more Ukrainian territory. Putin waged this war to occupy and destroy all of Ukraine and move on. His logic is historical. He wants to write himself in the history of the world. He dreams of restoring the Soviet empire, the collapse of which, in his own words, was the greatest geopolitical disaster of the last century. He openly declares that Russia’s borders do not end anywhere.

Therefore, let’s speak plainly: people in Europe are safe as long as Ukrainians continue to hold back the Russian offensive.

However, the lives of people outside Europe will also change. Our world is very interconnected, and only the spread of freedom makes it safer. Putin is trying to convince people that freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law are fake values because they don’t protect anyone during war. Putin is trying to demonstrate that a state with powerful military capacity and nuclear weapons can break the international order, dictate its rules to the entire world community, and even forcibly change internationally recognized borders.

If Putin succeeds, it will inspire other authoritarian leaders in different parts of the world to do the same. The UN’s international system of peace and security no longer works. It means that all countries will be forced to invest their resources not in education, healthcare, cultural development, or business support, not in addressing global problems such as the fight against poverty, climate change, or the safe development of new technologies, but in weapons. We will witness an increase in the number of nuclear countries, the use of AI as a method of warfare, the emergence of robotic armies, and new types of weapons of mass destruction. If evil is not stopped, we will find ourselves in a world that will be dangerous for everyone without exception.

It will be a world of the past. And that past was not great. It is a world where the force sets the rules, the majority must blindly obey them, and where human life has no value. Staying at the top of the hierarchy also requires effort. Therefore, a world where the rule of force prevails is always a world of wars and mass violence.

Never again and lasting peace
People in Ukraine crave peace more than anyone. But peace does not come when the country that has been attacked lays down its arms. Then, it is not peace but occupation. Occupation is the same war, just in a different form.

Occupation might seem a better option due to reducing human suffering. But this statement is not correct. Occupation does not reduce human suffering. Occupation makes human suffering invisible.

After six months of silence, Russia returned the body of my colleague, Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchyna. The body showed signs of torture, but several internal organs were missing – eyeballs, brain, and part of the trachea.

I knew Viktoria personally. She was talented, dedicated to the journalistic profession, and extraordinarily brave. In the summer of 2023, she went to the occupied territories to write a story about the illegal arrests and torture of civilians. And she disappeared. We already know that she was abducted, tortured, secretly transported to Russia, and held there in inhumane conditions without any official charges. We also know that she did not receive medical care and, according to cellmates, weighed about 30 kg. But we still don’t know how she died.
Victoria was only a few weeks shy of her 28th birthday. The Russians long refused to return her body to her grieving parents. They are still trying to hide what they did to her.

My colleague Victoria Roshchyna deliberately risked her life to tell the world what Russia was doing to the people in the occupied territories. She believed that the truth matters. She believed that it was a journalist’s duty to show the face of evil and bring the human dimension back into political discussions, and in doing so, she could save many lives.

If we stop fighting, we will cease to exist. Putin openly states that the Ukrainian people do not exist, just as there is no Ukrainian language or culture. For eleven years now, we have been documenting how these words are turning into the deliberate extermination of an entire nation. Russian troops have killed the highest number of Russian-speaking Ukrainians, whom they supposedly came to liberate. In the territories seized by Russia, they are building new military bases, implementing terror against the civilian population, holding thousands of men and women in prisons, forcibly mobilizing people into the Russian army, compelling children in schools to sing the Russian anthem, and giving the houses and apartments of Ukrainians to Russians from distant regions of Russia. Active colonization and preparations for a new armed offensive are proceeding rapidly, where the captured territories will serve as a military bridgehead.
As of now, about 1 million 600 thousand Ukrainian children are under occupation. Russia is raising a new generation of Putin’s soldiers out of them. Russian military personnel are regularly invited to schools to give patriotic lectures. Children from the occupied territories are brought to sports and recreation camps, where they wear military uniforms, live in barracks conditions, and learn to use weapons. Russian media disseminated footage of children lining up in military uniforms in a summer camp in Chechnya. Ramzan Kadyrov personally supervised the re-education program. The children in the video shouted ‘Akhmat Sila!’

After the age of 14, Ukrainian children are forcibly given a passport of a citizen of the Russian Federation. After the age of 18, they are subject to compulsory conscription into the Russian army. In other words, they will go to fight and die anywhere in the world Putin decides.
Never again and the power of people
In my experience, when you cannot rely on law or on the international system of peace and security, you can still always rely on people. We are used to thinking in terms of states and intergovernmental organizations, but ordinary people have much more power than they think.

Look at Ukrainians. Three years ago, no one believed we could withstand such a massive armed threat. Russia has veto power in the UN, nuclear weapons, mighty military capacity, a population of 140 million, and oil and gas, meaning a lot of money. Three years ago, not only Putin but other countries gave us, at most, 3-4 days. I was in Kyiv when Russian troops tried to encircle it. I remember how international organizations evacuated their personnel. But ordinary people stayed. Ordinary people started to do extraordinary things.

Ordinary farmers pushed Russian tanks into ditches by their tractors. Ordinary doctors performed surgeries in the basements. Ordinary teachers conducted lessons during winter blackouts. Ordinary civil servants kept the banking system afloat. Ordinary citizens united and rescued people trapped in the rubble of buildings, broke through encirclements with humanitarian aid, and organized evacuations under Russian artillery fire.

I wouldn’t wish our experience on anyone, but this dramatic time allowed us to manifest the best in ourselves: to be brave, to fight for freedom, to make difficult but correct decisions, to take responsibility, to help each other. Now, more than ever, we acutely feel what it means to be human.

People in this world are not just observers. It is not enough to understand that in many parts of the world, the space for freedom is shrinking to the size of a prison cell. It is naive to believe that you just need to wait long enough until things settle down. It is unworthy to evade responsibility; after all, we always have our voices and our stances. We are not hostages of circumstances but participants in this process; we cannot leave problems as an inheritance for our children.

And I want you to know that our children still draw the flags of Ukraine in occupied Donetsk, Mariupol, Kakhovka, Bakhchysarai, and Yalta. Andrii, who lost his father and mother in a car fired by Russians, dreams of becoming a football player and playing for the national team, and for his parents up there in heaven to be proud of him and say, ‘That’s our son.’

And you know what, if our children continue to dream and fight even under occupation, then we, adults, have absolutely no right to give up. Resisting evil is not only morally right but also the most effective life strategy.

It is our time, yours and mine. We have no other. People create this world through their specific actions. They change the course of history.

The 21st Never Again Auschwitz lecture was given by Oleksandra Matviichuk  at Nederlands Auschwitz Comité, Amsterdam, Netherlands