Failure of International Law, Need for a New Order, and Prospects for Ukraine

Brian Bonner: Hello, everybody. This is Brian Bonner, host of Ukraine Calling on Hromadske Radio. Just when you think that Russia can’t get any lower, this week’s events, horrible events, proved otherwise. Bombing the largest children’s hospital in Ukraine, bombing a maternity hospital, and bombing a kindergarten were among the targets of the Russian mass bombing on Monday.

Of course, the United Nations Security Council met and talked and did nothing because that’s all they have the power to do. We also had the NATO summit where the Western allies, who we’re grateful to, were playing catch-up as usual, but promising us more air defenses to stop these attacks in the future and finally, the arrival of F-16s.

We also saw the spectacle this week of the leader of the largest democracy in the world, Narendra Modi, giving bear hugs to Vladimir Putin, the war criminal, on the same day that Ukraine lost another 44 people to bombing attacks. So it’s a serious subject. It’s a horrible subject. But I have just the guest in the studio to show us the way out of it, hopefully, to give us some clues about how to stop this carnage. And so I welcome Oleksandra Matviichuk.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: Thank you for the invitation.

Is it possible to punish Russia?

Brian Bonner: I am so honored to meet you. Out of the 14 years I was leading the Kyiv Post, we had never met, so this is our first chance to talk. But Oleksandra, of course, is one of the great human rights champions of Ukraine. She is a Nobel Peace Prize winner with the Center for Civil Liberties that she heads, along with Memorial in Russia and Belarus, Alice Bialatski.

The great thing about Oleksandra Matviichuk is that she has made invisible human rights visible to the world. No matter how many cases we have, we have more than a hundred thousand cases of human rights abuses and war crimes, she manages to personalize the stories. As she puts it, she gives names to the victims.

And she also thinks beyond just documenting, which is very important and kind of thankless and difficult work, but also how to restructure the international architecture of the world to prevent wars and punish those who are guilty of war crimes.

With that, I’m curious about how you assessed this week, out of all the horrible tragedies. I keep waiting for the time when the world says, «Okay, this is enough. We’re going to stop this guy. We’re going to give Ukraine everything it needs to win, and we’re going to give it to them now, and we’re going to get this guy for war crimes.» Have we reached that point yet?

Oleksandra Matviichuk: It’s a question, because all this hell which we now face this week in Kyiv, Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro, and other cities, which were massively bombarded by Russian rockets, is a result of the total impunity which Russia enjoyed for decades. Because Russia hit hospitals in Chechnya, Russia hit hospitals in Georgia, Russia hit hospitals in Syria, Russia hit hospitals in Ukraine, and Russia has never been punished for this.

So without punishment, we can expect, unfortunately, that the situation will continue, and not just in Ukraine. It’s naive to think that Ukraine will be the last stop of the Russian empire. That’s why it’s so important to find a way to deconstruct this long-lasting tradition of impunity which Russia enjoyed for decades.

What will a future international security system look like?

Brian Bonner: I know you’re a lawyer who says that the international legal system is broken. I think many people agree with you there. But let’s just say there was a conference, and all the world’s powers, including Russia and the United States, agreed that we would create an enforceable, binding security architecture to prevent wars, genocides, and killings.

What would that look like in your view? And if you were appointed one of the co-chairs to devise that system.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: Let me formulate it like this: someone who can find the answers to the questions on how to build this new international architecture in a proper way will definitely receive a Nobel Peace Prize. We have to answer at least two questions.

The first question is how to make the voices of people from different countries heard on this platform. A lot of states that are now members of the United Nations do not represent their people. They represent the current ruling elite, dictators, or kleptocrats, but not the people’s voices. The question is how to construct this architecture in a way that people will be heard, not just regimes that have captured power in their countries.

The second question is how to design this international architecture to base it on human rights, not on GDP or the size of the country. What we observe currently in the Security Council and even in discussions about how to reform the Security Council to include countries like India and Brazil based on their large GDPs. But the focus should be on human rights and values. This is the second question that needs an answer.

Brian Bonner: That goes to why we are where we are. What is the root cause of war? Now, that’s a huge question. Is it that some lives are more valuable than others? Is it greed? Is it macho attitudes? Is it male superiority and the lack of women’s rights? What is it? I know you’ve thought about this.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: I think everything you mentioned, because it’s always complex. But I am also confident that it’s the nature of empires and autocratic regimes. Empires have a center but no borders. If an empire has energy, it always tries to expand. It’s a way to survive. In the 21st century, even if it’s not an empire but just an autocratic regime, the existence of a free world always poses a threat to dictators and their power. That’s why they will always attack. They can’t coexist with a free world.

Was it possible to prevent the war?

Brian Bonner: You know, I look at that person in the Kremlin, and I just see greed, insecurity, and this idea that some people are more valuable than others and that human life is worthless. When you’re firing 44 missiles into Ukraine, you pretty much don’t care who you kill.

But was there a time, like Nazi Germany, when defeated, and Imperial Japan, when defeated, faced consequences and reorganized their societies along democratic lines? They are now some of our greatest allies. Go to the post-World War II architecture, which is broken now, that, as you’ve pointed out, never happened under Stalin, Holodomor, or any of these human rights abuses, gulags, anything.

So there was one step. And the Allies, frankly, just wanted to go home, have peace, and go back to their lives. That emboldened Russia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, and I know that’s where you got your start in human rights, Russia was on its back for a while. But it didn’t take Putin very long to get back on his feet, using Chechnya as the first step. Was there a point in time where you think he could have been stopped before what happened here?

Oleksandra Matviichuk: Sure. I think Chechnya was an alarming point. What the Russians did in Chechnya was not just beyond the norms of international humanitarian law; it was beyond the norms of humanity. They first experienced the practice of filtration camps there. They destroyed the city of Grozny, a city of half a million people, to the ground, and the world turned a blind eye to what Russia did in Chechnya.

Brian Bonner: Because Chechens weren’t valuable people?

Oleksandra Matviichuk: Because of different reasons. Let’s be honest, well-developed democracies need cheap oil and gas. And to have sources of cheap oil and gas, they try to maintain balanced relations with Putin and the Kremlin’s elite.

This once again shows us a very simple historical lesson learned: when you base your political decisions only on economic benefits, your political career, geopolitical interests, or an illusion of security, even if you benefit in the short term, you will face catastrophe in the long term. The problem is not just you, but all of us.

Brian Bonner: Well, yeah, I mean, I agree. I think in the West, the attitude was, «Well, Chechnya is far away, and anyway, radical Muslims and nothing we can do. And yeah, we like cheap oil and gas. And let’s hope Russia democratizes.» So then Syria next. And for a while, it looked like we were going to stop. There was going to be a Western coalition to stop it. That went away completely. And now nobody thinks about Syria or really cares about Syrians.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: When I hear about these double standards and different treatment of different conflicts, the first thing that comes to my mind is Syria. I remember two personal stories that I want to share. First, I was one of the organizers of public protests near the Russian embassy when Russia bombarded Aleppo.

We organized this public protest with a demand to push Russia to open green corridors and at least save civilians from the city. I remember that we gathered probably dozens of civil activists in Ukraine, but it wasn’t thousands. I always remind Ukrainians about this example. Because now we ask from others something that we didn’t demonstrate by ourselves.

Because for us, probably Syria was also far away. People don’t go to bed with thoughts of Syria and don’t wake up with them. And now, when Ukrainians demand that different countries do something similar, we have to be honest that we’re also responsible.

But the second story is an example of the right behavior. When the large-scale war started, I got a letter from my human rights colleagues from Syria. It was a very human letter. They wrote to me that they are with us in solidarity. They know what war is about. They know what human pain is about. And they asked what they could do to help us. They said they would do everything they could because our fight is their fight. This is a good example of how to tackle these double standards, not by competing for attention, but by uniting efforts.

Brian Bonner: Okay. There was another missed opportunity. And then we all lived through the 2014 revolution, which Vladimir Putin decided to retaliate against by invading and taking Crimea.

And, you know, we were here from 2014 to 2022, living through the little war before the big war started. First of all, did you see the big war coming? I lived here during those eight years, and I have my answer, but I would like to hear yours.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: I’m afraid that the big war is still coming.

Brian Bonner: So this is maybe the medium war.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: I don’t know what historians in the future will call this period, but it’s a very turbulent time. This impunity encourages other authoritarian leaders in the world to do the same because they see that human rights guarantees and security mean nothing. You can’t rely on the international system of peace and security.

It’s very weak. So it’s very easy to predict that they will start to challenge this system to get more benefits and to change the world order, which is based on rules and the UN Charter, into something else based on brute force.

Russian invasion in 2014 and 2022

Brian Bonner: Yes, and we already have an axis of evil. I guess we can call it something else. But the well-defined countries of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and we have some democracies in danger. So this was the medium war.

But from 2014 to 2022, did you, before this happened, and you documented a lot of human rights abuses during this period of time. The scale was horrible, but it was mercifully smaller than the scale of human rights abuses now, correct?

Oleksandra Matviichuk: Yes and no. When we speak about a big war, I always remind myself that for people in Crimea, and in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, 2014 was a big war. This was when everything they called normal life was completely ruined. For them, there is no difference between a small war and a big war because they were in the hot spot.

Brian Bonner: They lost their world, yes. We both know many people, you know many more, but yes, we know that. But did you think they would come to Kyiv, or did you think they might be satisfied with what they had?

Oleksandra Matviichuk: Let me explain my feeling like this. When the Revolution of Dignity started, I created the civil initiative Euromaidan SOS. We brought together several thousand people to provide legal and other assistance to persecuted protesters. We worked 24 hours a day to provide legal aid, and hundreds of people every day passed through our care.

People who were beaten, arrested, tortured, and framed with fabricated criminal cases. Later, in February 2014, we supported the relatives of those who were killed. I remember thinking, what the hell is going on, it can’t get worse, and then it got worse in a week or two. At the end of January, when the killings started and representatives of official law enforcement bodies were involved, we still don’t know who exactly killed people like (Serhiy) Nigoyan and (Mykhailo) Zhyznevskyi. It was my psychological breaking point. I told myself it always can be worse.

And I had to be ready for everything that could happen. So since that time, because just in months, Russia started the war of aggression and occupied Crimea and parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, I know it can get worse.

Brian Bonner: Yes. And as you just said, this might not even be the big war. From my perspective, when I was the editor of the Kyiv Post, we ran what seemed like hundreds of editorials and opinions saying the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming. It’s horrible, the scale of killing that is happening now. Back then, it was smaller. I think we lost 14,000 soldiers in that eight-year period.

It was a small enough scale that we were able to humanize. We could get the pictures of the soldiers, their names, a little bit about the village they were from. That seems almost like an innocent time, even though it wasn’t, because we had Slavyansk and Kramatorsk and many other things.

But it just seemed to me, and as I go back through the archives, people were arguing against sanctions for Russia. People were continuing to do business. Of course, we had Angela Merkel. It just seemed to me historically that Russia was just waiting until Nord Stream 2 was completed before they moved on.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: It was obvious.

Can Ukraine get justice it deserves?

Brian Bonner: And we’re still not there to this point. Your career is already many decades into human rights law. That gives us the question of justice. We still don’t have justice for the Heavenly Hundred. We still don’t have justice for many murders. We still don’t have justice for many crimes and corruption that we have suffered in Ukraine. We haven’t delivered justice to ourselves in Ukraine. I look at Pavlo Lazarenko in the U.S., a great court system, and even two decades later, I think they’re still appealing the seizure of his assets.

MH17, we’re coming up to the 10th anniversary, and we still don’t have justice there. You’re documenting tens of thousands of cases. I mean, is it that the justice I would love to see, like a Nuremberg-type trial where Putin and his defense ministers and all his lieutenants are confronted with the evidence and sentenced as guilty, but it seems like the only justice we’re really going to get is from journalists, historians, and people like you documenting and bringing the victims’ stories to life.

Or do you see there’s still a path?

Oleksandra Matviichuk: I still think that we have a chance, and I look to this chance as our historical responsibility because each generation has its own responsibility to move forward with this international system of peace and security and to set new standards for justice for human rights abuses.

It used to be accepted, but unfortunate, that in wars or huge human rights crises, like in Iran currently, the majority of victims would have no chance for justice because it’s very difficult to individually track each story. But now we can challenge this norm.

We, as humankind, are equipped technically. We have digital tools that provide us with the opportunity to restore what happened, document war crimes, collect evidence, identify perpetrators, and reach each human story. This is something we couldn’t even dream of during the Balkans war just 30 years ago. So now we are technically equipped, and we just need to set this ambitious goal and start to move forward. This is not just a chance, it’s a historical obligation.

Brian Bonner: We’re just waiting for a forum, a tribunal with international enforcement powers.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: Not just a tribunal, but a tribunal is an essential element. Let me remind you why it’s essential. When we have four types of international crimes—war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and crimes of aggression—we have no international court that can prosecute this last type of crime, the crime of aggression.

All these previous types of international crimes are committed because Putin and his surroundings started this war. It’s logical: if we want to prevent wars in the future, we have to punish the state and its leaders who start such wars in the present. In the history of humankind, we have only one precedent, the Nuremberg tribunal and Tokyo tribunal. All other tribunals, like those for Rwanda, Yugoslavia, and the special courts in Sierra Leone, prosecuted people because they killed each other not according to norms. If they had killed each other according to norms, there would have been no tribunals. So we have to put wars beyond the legal frame.

That is why Ukrainian officials and Ukrainian civil society are promoting the idea of creating a special court, a special tribunal on aggression, to hold Putin, the top political leadership and high military command of the Russian state accountable.

Brian Bonner: So nations would have to like to give up a bit of their sovereignty. It would look something like this. To prevent wars, if an aggressor, like say invades another country, then automatic sanctions would apply. They would be isolated and completely cut off from the world’s economy. And if they committed human rights abuses, the same thing would apply.

Nations would have to kind of surrender, agree that we will pursue justice, but that would take military force, it would seem to me, to get out of the Kremlin.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: You’re totally right. It needs another international architecture because we have only one body whose official mandate is to use force when international obligations are violated: The Security Council. And Russia has veto power in the Security Council. That is why I liked your brilliant beginning of our conversation. When the Security Council gathers, they discuss these horrible attacks on children’s hospitals and do nothing as usual because they can’t do anything.

Brian Bonner: They can’t. Yeah, that’s World War II architecture. That obviously has to change, but well, that’s for greater minds like yours. And I think that you’re going to still stay with this, right? You’re not going to switch to corporate law all of a sudden in five years.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: But we can create a demand. For Ukrainians, it will be too late, but we are fighting for something that is not limited by national borders: freedom, justice, human dignity, and the value of human life. Supporting us in this fight is crucial because even when we succeed in achieving justice for Ukrainians, it will set a precedent for justice for other people in different parts of the globe who are suffering.

I will share with you two insights about justice if I may. I think it’s very important but not always visible. I worked with people who went through hell directly. And that’s why I know that people see justice very differently. For some, justice means seeing their perpetrators behind bars.

For others, it means receiving compensation. Without compensation, they will feel unsatisfied. For some, justice means knowing the truth about what happened to their loved ones. And for others, it means being publicly heard and receiving official recognition that what happened to them and their families is not just immoral but illegal.

Our task is therefore much more difficult. We need to build a comprehensive justice strategy that includes investigating and prosecuting perpetrators, ensuring people know the truth, giving people the opportunity to be heard, providing compensation, and seeing perpetrators behind bars.

And second thing, I travel a lot. Now it’s become a part of my job, because when we work on a new international mechanism of accountability it means that you have to convince presidents, governments, parliaments, and popes to do it.

And I understand that good people think that justice is important, but secondary because military support matters, peace matters, negotiations matter, but not justice. What these people don’t understand is that they see justice as a tool of how to influence the past and the future. The past because you prosecute someone for something which has already been done. For the future, because it’s a signal that if you commit something similar, you will be prosecuted. But they don’t understand that justice can change to reality today.

When Russians see themselves as untouchable but then start to observe real decisive legal actions, like the arrest warrant against Putin and his child commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, or the creation of a special tribunal on aggression in the future, even a small doubt among Russians that they might not avoid responsibility this time can create a cooling effect on the brutality of human rights violations. Because we are speaking about an ongoing large-scale war, this means we can save thousands and thousands of lives. This is the impact of justice on the present.

How to tell the stories of human rights violations?

Brian Bonner: Okay, so that’s a clear direction where you’re going and your allies and the civilized world. I hope I live to see that day. As a historian and journalist, I mean, well, history major and journalist, the truth is enough for me. When you look at the Holodomor, it was so long ago, almost 100 years, but 1932-33.

The documentation was horrible because it was suppressed and for many other reasons. But is there a plan to get these stories out there in a systematized way? I know there are lots of books already about the war, but it just seems to me that if nothing else, like you say, people need to know the names and what happened to them.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: We created a national network of local documenters when the large-scale war started. Together with partners, we united dozens of regional organizations in this network, called the Tribunal for Putin Initiative, a civil society database for this war. Jointly we documented more than 75,000 episodes of international crimes. This is the biggest civil society database for this war. And generally this war is the most documented in human history.

We are doing this not just for national archives, which is important because even now Russia claims there was no Bucha Massacre, saying the dead bodies were actors and it was a false performance. It’s very cynical, but you can imagine what Russia will say in decades, and we need solid evidence that it happened. We respect the work of historians and other purposes for which this evidence can be used, but as human rights lawyers, we are doing this for justice. Injustice can’t be delayed for decades because when justice is postponed, justice is denied.

Brian Bonner: Yeah, human rights abuses are still ongoing. The information you are getting from occupied Crimea, Donbass, Ukrainian prisoners of war, Ukrainian children taken to Russia—is your network effective, or is it just hard to get information now about what’s going on?

Oleksandra Matviichuk: For sure we can’t record every criminal episode on the occupied territory. Especially in gray zones where people have no tools to defend their rights, freedom, property, lives, and loved ones. It’s a territory of fear and helplessness. When faced with unprecedented cruelty, to survive mentally, you start to change your mind.

You start to tell yourself, “I can do nothing about it. I just want to survive.” And to survive, if they want me to speak Russian, I will speak Russian. If they want me to send my children to the election of Russian militaries, I will let them go. I just want to survive. This is the psychological effect of terror that Russia imposes in occupied territories.

In such conditions, as long as a territory is under occupation, you get less information from there. When violence becomes the norm, people start to avoid noticing this violence.

Will Ukraine face permanent war?

Brian Bonner: Yes, it’s helplessness, and there’s a human tendency to take the path of least resistance, especially if you don’t feel like you can change anything. You have talked about how it’s also human nature to forget tragedies and dream of a victory parade and the end of the war. But is that really possible, living next to Russia and everything we’ve seen in the last few years? My question to you is, we can influence the West, but we can’t control what they do. We certainly can’t control what Russia does, although we can try to punish them and get our allies to impose sanctions.

It seems to me that Ukrainian society is going to have to reorganize itself for endless war. That means more soldiers starting at age 18, equipping and training them as part of a civil society, part of a democracy, so they are confident they will survive the war, like many American soldiers.

We’ve lost 6 million people, including 1 million men abroad. Is Ukrainian society ready for this? We can fight, but as an American living here, I see that Ukrainians are generally peaceful people who don’t want to invade or harm others. But it seems we have to get ready for a forever war, like Israel.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: Russia is preparing for a long-lasting war. It’s obvious when you see how Russia has changed its economy, mobilized, and militarized society. There’s the emergence of a new middle class—the Russian military and their relatives. They see the war as a tool to revitalize depressed regions through the creation of new military factories and plants. Unfortunately, this long-lasting war has become profitable for Russian society.

It would be naive to think this is just a war with Ukraine. Listen to what Russian officials and propagandists say publicly—they declare war on Western values. This isn’t just a war between two states; it’s a war between two systems. Don’t be naive to think it will stop in Ukraine. If Putin isn’t stopped in Ukraine, he will go further.

In such circumstances, when we talk about a long-lasting war, it’s important to ask the right question because the answer will be different. It’s not about how Ukraine will survive and adapt to being a neighbor to a country that wants a long-lasting war. The question is how Europe, especially the European Union and its allies, will survive with a 140-million-strong country with nuclear weapons and veto power in the UN that wants to conduct a long-lasting war and sees the European Union as a field of Russian interests. That’s the question. So, when someone asks me, “What is Ukraine’s plan?”—sorry, that’s the wrong question.

Brian Bonner: You ask them what their plan is.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: Yes, exactly. It’s not just a Ukrainian problem.

Brian Bonner: Can we do it, though? Can we become a warrior society, like a big Israel, understanding that much of our economy will have to focus on the best weapons, the best fighters, rather than education, roads, or culture?

Oleksandra Matviichuk: It means we need a long-term strategy. The short-term strategy is clear: help Ukraine win, because that stops Russia and provides at least a chance for some changes within Russia itself. The Russian people may tolerate a war criminal as president, but they won’t tolerate a loser war criminal as a president. There’s no guarantee, but there’s a chance.

Brian Bonner: So, you believe Russia needs to be defeated for there to be a chance at Russian democracy. I know you work with Russian human rights activists.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: Yes, we work with them every day. We have thousands of illegally detained Ukrainians, and sometimes the only way to save their lives is through small steps, like sending medicine, which is only possible through our Russian human rights colleagues. That’s why Oleg Orlov, head of the Human Rights Center Memorial, with whom we shared the Nobel Peace Prize, was jailed just several months ago.

Brian Bonner: I wanted to ask you about that. Of the co-winners, you’re the freest. Are you in touch with Oleg Orlov? It seems he received a multi-year prison sentence.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: The last time I was in touch with him was before the final court hearing where the verdict was announced. Since then, I’ve only gotten information through his lawyers. I’m the only head of a human rights organization who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 and is still free. All the other co-recipients are in jail, which means I have to work three times harder, also for them.

Brian Bonner: The third one is Ales Bialiatski. Did I pronounce that right?

Oleksandra Matviichuk: Yes, he was jailed when the Nobel Peace Prize was announced. This is his second term. Interestingly, I was in Minsk at the court hearing when he was jailed the first time. I came as a gesture of solidarity. We all knew it was a fabricated criminal case and that he would be jailed, but it was important to be there and show human solidarity, which we can’t underestimate.

Brian Bonner: Well, I pray for him. I’ve been to Belarus and Russia and actually worked there, but it doesn’t look very good.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: So, returning to your question, we need a long-term strategy toward Russia. And by “we,” I mean the international community, which declares and practices democratic values. But we still don’t have it, and that’s a problem. If we don’t know what we want in the end, we will always be playing someone else’s game because Russia knows what it wants. Russia is always proactive. They commit something, present it as fact and complete, like a new normality, as Peskov said, and then push the international community to accept it.

We have no long-term strategy. What do we want to do with Russia? We can’t say it’s a blind spot. It’s not a blind spot; it’s a huge country with 140 million people, veto power in the UN, nuclear weapons, imperialistic ambitions, and a very particular mindset about the value of human life. You’re right—they don’t see the value of life, not just in children in Ukrainian hospitals but in general. The cheapest resource in Russia

Brian Bonner: They’re proving that day in and day out. But the strategy has to come from Ukraine, within Ukraine.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: Yes, we have to be part of the group that develops this strategy. But I don’t see any attempt to develop it. It’s always reactive.

Brian Bonner: Inside Ukraine?

Oleksandra Matviichuk: Inside the West. It’s always reactive.

Brian Bonner: Well, that’s true. But that goes back to overcoming indifference because people don’t get excited until it hits them.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: Because they still don’t want to take responsibility. It’s a crisis of responsibility. Politicians in the West live under the illusion that this problem might vanish or at least won’t be their problem in five years.

Brian Bonner: Well, true. We have that short-term thinking. And I agree with you—I’m in the camp that says we need a strategy to win because the West plus Ukraine is much stronger than Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea combined.

But do we have that in Ukraine? Because human nature—everyone longs for the day when there’s no more war. But I’m starting to tell people that day might never come. I don’t think we’re going to have the victory parade. I mean, Ukraine has obviously proven it’s going to be an independent nation forever, but I think we might become a warrior nation. I don’t know. I hope I’m wrong.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: We need to start a real public discussion about what victory means for us. Imagine, even in the fantastic scenario where we return all Ukrainian territories tomorrow.

Brian Bonner: That would be sweet.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: But it doesn’t mean that the day after tomorrow, Russia won’t start the war again. What does victory in Ukraine look like? Is it a Ukraine that has succeeded in its democratic transition, or is it just a military victory? What does victory mean for us? It has different layers, different scenarios, and different chronological and intermediate goals. We have to be pragmatic and understand that we won’t achieve everything all at once. It’s a path, and we have to keep moving forward, reaching these intermediate goals, and then going further and further.

Brian Bonner: That’s going to require stamina and strength because Putin isn’t just killing people—he’s managed to terrorize millions into leaving the country, and our birth rate is the lowest it’s ever been since independence.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: Yes, because it’s human nature—when you see a rocket deliberately sent to hit a hospital where children were being treated for cancer, you think, «Oh my God, I can’t stand this, let’s do everything to stop it.» But the problem is that Putin won’t stop. He’ll do the same horror in another way. I’ve documented this horror for 10 years in occupied territories. Before the large-scale war started, the world closed its eyes to what was going on in these occupied territories. Occupation, as I understand it, is just another form of war. Occupation doesn’t decrease human suffering; it makes human suffering invisible.

Closing remarks

Brian Bonner: Yes, you’ve made that point eloquently on the world stage. Would the world be more peaceful if women were in charge and we had more equal rights? Or not necessarily?

Oleksandra Matviichuk: Let’s at least try.

Brian Bonner: Okay. Well, we’ve tried with the old white men. That hasn’t worked out very well.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: Men have failed. Let’s be honest. So let’s at least try.

Brian Bonner: I’d like to see that, because democracy’s great strength is in equal rights. It’s such a waste that this war is happening—well, anyway, I’m digressing. You are from Boyarka?

Oleksandra Matviichuk: I was born in Kyiv, but I spent my childhood in Boyarka. That’s why Boyarka feels like my native city—I grew up there.

Brian Bonner: There are actually a lot of famous people from there. Composers, artists, Max Levin, Eugene Hütz, and others. Something in the water there makes people excel?

Oleksandra Matviichuk: Oh, but we have an enormous number of fantastic people from different small cities and villages in Ukraine, so it’s not just one example. It’s human nature—when you face dramatic times, some people start to express their best qualities.

Brian Bonner: Yes. Well, I certainly think you’re one of them, and we’ve seen a nation full of heroes recently. If this isn’t the «big war,» I don’t want to see what that would look like, but I fear you’re right. Did you feel—I’m sure you watched NATO, and the reaction to the hospital bombings—the West is moving, but still not fast enough and still doesn’t fully get it? Or is there an «aha» moment where they’ve said, «It’s going to work, we’re going to do this»?

Oleksandra Matviichuk: In the language of dictators, the West shows weakness. And that’s why the dictators will attack again.

Brian Bonner: Okay, well, there’s a whole lot more I would love to talk to you about, but I think now is a good time to leave it, unless there’s something else you want to go over.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: Yes. I want to emphasize once again that we in Ukraine are preparing for a very difficult future in the coming months. You know that the energy infrastructure is ruined—we don’t know how we’ll survive the winter. We lack air defense systems and rockets, and with this weak response to the bombing of children’s hospitals, it’s easy to predict that this behavior will soon be repeated. But still, despite everything, the story of Ukraine is a life-affirming story.

Ukrainian people have shown their readiness to fight for freedom, and they prove this readiness not just with words and statements but on the battlefield. They also prove it near those children’s hospitals—when it happened, hundreds of people started to help each other, collect money for hospitals, bring water, and restore the rubble. It shows me once again that when someone tries to take your freedom, that freedom becomes a powerful force, speaking out through individual actions. This will be remembered in world history, and that’s why it’s a life-affirming story.

Brian Bonner: Well put as always, Oleksandra Matviichuk. You know, I’ve always wanted to ask you this—everyone has to take a mental break from the horrors we live in. I’m not a soldier at the front, which is a real danger, but just living in Ukraine brings its own set of stresses. Do you take a break? How do you manage that?

Oleksandra Matviichuk: I’m not a good example. I don’t say that taking a break is useless, and I don’t pretend that I don’t need one. But still, as long as I can keep moving forward, I will. I understand pragmatically that this is a long-lasting marathon. If I can’t allow myself a break, I at least have to do everything to keep my energy and strength, and to find not just a work-life balance, but a war-life balance.

Brian Bonner: Well, at least in real marathons, you know how far you have to run—26 miles. Here, we don’t. But I’m glad you decided to spend your valuable time talking with us at Hormadske Radio.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: I’m the one who’s grateful for the invitation.

Brian Bonner: You are one of Ukraine’s great treasures, and I know you’re not a one-person show—you have a team and many allies. But you’ve really been giving voice to human rights, and beyond that, trying to think of ways—and we all have to do that in the world, even though we haven’t arrived there yet—to prevent wars and punish war criminals, so that we can actually achieve the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For that, thank you so much.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: Thank you.