An interview with Oleksandra Matviichuk, the Ukrainian human-rights lawyer whose organization is a 2022 Nobel peace laureate
Oleksandra Matviichuk is a Ukrainian human-rights lawyer. She heads the Center for Civil Liberties, in Ukraine. I talked with her last Monday, when she was in New York for a session of the Oslo Freedom Forum. On Friday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that the Nobel Peace Prize this year would go to the Center for Civil Liberties, along with Memorial — the human-rights organization in Russia (now outlawed by the Kremlin) — and Ales Bialiatski, a Belarusian political prisoner.
I will excerpt my interview with Matviichuk, editing for length and clarity.
It is now October 2022. Are you surprised at all that Ukraine is still standing?
I’m not surprised. First of all, I know Ukraine’s history. We have been fighting for freedom for hundreds of years, and we will never give up. Second, I know the Ukrainian people. Putin underestimated us, and so did the West.
Before the full-scale invasion in February, a lot of journalists abroad, and even some of my colleagues abroad, asked me, “Why are you not preparing to leave?” They were sure that Kyiv would fall in three or four days. When the invasion started, my friends and colleagues asked me to vacate.
But Ukrainians in general saw things much differently.
I have heard you stress that Ukrainians are not fighting for their territories, though they are entitled to those territories. They are fighting for the people in those territories — which makes a big difference.
This war started not in February 2022 but in February 2014. I had been documenting war crimes for eight years already. I am very aware of what Russians did to people in the occupied territories. I have interviewed hundreds of people. They have told me how they were beaten, how they were raped, how their fingers were cut off, how they were crammed into wooden boxes, how they were tortured with electricity. One lady reported that her eyes were dug out with a spoon.
We will never leave our people alone in these occupied territories. I know what I’m talking about. It would be inhuman to leave them in this gray zone without any protection.
Obviously, Ukrainians care most about Ukraine, as well they should. Their country is under assault. They are fighting for their lives. But do you have a sense that this war is a battle, so to speak, in a larger war?
This war has many dimensions: a military dimension, an economic dimension, an informational dimension, a cyber dimension, a values dimension . . .
Where values are concerned, this war is not a war between two states but between two systems: authoritarianism and democracy. Putin started this war not because he was afraid of NATO. Putin is afraid of the idea of freedom.
It is becoming obvious to more and more people that if we do not stop Putin in Ukraine, he will go farther.
When I ask my colleagues in Russia — brave human-rights defenders, working in unbelievable circumstances — how I can help them, they answer, “Be successful. If you want to help us, be successful. Victory by Ukraine would have a huge impact on the whole region and on the future of democracy itself.”
You were a little girl when the Soviet Union dissolved. What do you remember?
I was born into an ordinary family. My father is a doctor and my mother is a teacher. After the collapse of the Soviet regime, these were two of the most vulnerable categories of people, because they depended on a state budget, and, suddenly, there were no state budgets. My childhood was happy but poor.
I will give you a Soviet memory. I will give you a concrete example of the power of Soviet propaganda.
When I was five, my mother sent me to a music school. I met my future teacher of piano. She asked me to recite a poem. I was confused by this and not prepared. But I recited a poem — a poem about Lenin.
Where I learned it, I don’t know. But I knew it.
What language did you speak at home with your parents?
My first language was Russian. I switched to the Ukrainian language in school when I started to learn Ukrainian history and Ukrainian literature. I suddenly understood that my parents spoke Russian not because it was their choice but because they had been forced into it.
The first language of my father was Ukrainian. When he entered medical school, the education was in Russian. But more than that, the attitude toward you if you spoke Ukrainian was awful. There was visible discrimination.
I decided to switch to Ukrainian, not out of protest, but in making a pragmatic choice. I thought, “This is my language, and if I want this language to continue to exist, I have to speak it.”
How old were you at this time?
I think I was in seventh grade.
Did you start to feel Ukrainian about this time as well?
I think so, yes.
This is something interesting: I witnessed the Ukrainian language become a mark of active people in Kyiv. It was used by intellectuals, civil-society leaders, and others.
I witnessed a lot of people start to speak Ukrainian, even before this war started. People were returning to their roots. Then the Russians invaded in 2014. People could see that this war had a genocidal character. It was visible in occupied Crimea and parts of the Donbas.
The Russians tried to destroy Ukrainian identity. First, their tanks appeared on Ukrainian territory. Then they put up banners with a Pushkin quote — something like, “This is Russian land, and you are Russians!”
So, in this war, we are fighting for freedom in all senses: the freedom to be an independent state, not a colony of Russia; the freedom to be Ukrainians, to have our own language and culture, as other nations of the world do; the freedom to have a democratic choice — a chance to build a country where the judiciary is independent, human rights are protected, the government is accountable, and the police serve the people.
Are you still shocked by the atrocities committed by Russians in your country? The war crimes? Or are you numb by now?
It’s still shocking. I am a human-rights lawyer, with 20 years of experience in Ukraine and other countries of our region. In eight of them, I have documented war crimes. I have heard hundreds of horrible stories. But even I, with all my professional background, was not prepared for such a level of atrocities. I think there are some things that human beings can’t be prepared for.
How do you hold on to your sanity?
I don’t know the answer. I only know that we are in a marathon, and we need energy to keep going. I will be honest: In August, I went through a very difficult period of exhaustion. For the first time, I had no energy to get up. But I overcame it.
We are faced with challenges that require superhuman efforts of us. But we will keep going. Sooner or later, we will win.
Is it difficult to keep from hating Russians? I imagine you have known hundreds of Russians in your life.
For eight years, I have had to ask myself, “How can human beings do such horrific things?” I sought answers. I have read maybe dozens of psychological articles.
The problem of the Russian nation is that Russians have this imperialistic code, as a driver of their existence. I wish Russians could overcome this side of their nature. It’s a necessity, if Russians are to be happy and successful.
There is an old joke from Soviet times. I heard it recently, applied to current times.
Butter appears in a shop. This is very rare. People line up, for miles. A woman stands in line for hours. By the time it is her turn, the butter is gone. She goes home, disappointed. She wonders whether there will be a chance to buy butter again. Suddenly, she hears a noise in the sky. She looks up and sees military planes. Smiling, she thinks, “Regardless, we are a great country.”
Many people in the West — many people in the Free World — are sympathetic to Putin. What do you have to say to them? Anything?
Yes. I don’t ask you to trust me and my experience. You can learn history. There have always been people in the West who liked the czars, who liked Stalin. Nothing has changed. But people change their mind when they actually go to live in Russia. One example is the Marquis de Custine, the French aristocrat who wrote a book about his experience. There are many others.
It’s very easy to love, not Russia, but the image of Russia that the regime in Russia tries to create.
How important to Ukraine is the support of the United States?
I am trying to find the word in English. I know it in Ukrainian. It’s extremely important, tremendously important. I am a human-rights lawyer who knows pretty well the U.N. system, the EU system, the Council of Europe system, etc. I have had a lot of experience in different international legal systems. And there is no mechanism, no legal instrument, that can liberate even one person from Russian captivity. The Russians kill us, and the United States provides us weapons. Maybe all this is weird to hear from a human-rights lawyer, but I want our people to survive, and that’s why we are grateful for the United States, and why we ask for long-range weapons in sufficient amounts, because now we have a window of opportunity to liberate more Ukrainian territories, as we have been doing since September of this year.
It is so fragile. The peaceful life that many take for granted — it’s so fragile.