WASHINGTON — A Ukrainian human rights activist who is set to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo next week says in a new interview that world leaders must create a special international tribunal to try Russian President Vladimir Putin and large numbers of his military on war crimes charges to bring to justice.
“We cannot wait. We need to set up an international tribunal now,” said Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Kyiv-based Civil Liberties Center, which is honored with the Peace Prize for its work documenting 27,000 war crimes and other atrocities committed by Russian troops have been committed since Putin’s order Invaded Ukraine in February.
Ukrainian human rights lawyer Oleksandra Matviichuk. (Roselle Chen/Portal)
Speaking to Yahoo News during a brief trip to Washington, Matviichuk said the current system of trying world leaders before the International Criminal Court in The Hague is simply inadequate to deal with the scale of Russian crimes. Instead, it called for a specially created tribunal, similar to the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders after World War II.
“I was like, ‘Who are we documenting all these crimes for? Who will bring justice to the hundreds of thousands of victims?’ Because we’re not just talking about Putin and the rest of the senior political leadership and high military command, we’re talking about all the Russians who committed these crimes single-handedly. … We don’t need revenge. We need justice.”
As for the Russian leader himself: “Yes, the point is to physically arrest Vladimir Putin,” she said. “But look at history. There are many successful and very convincing examples when people who see themselves as untouchable suddenly appeared in court and when the whole regime – which believes they will [last] for ages – collapsed.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin and damaged power lines in Ukraine. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; Photos: Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Matviichuk arrived in Washington this week to receive a “pioneer” award from Hillary Clinton at Georgetown University along with several other Ukrainian women, including the country’s first lady Olena Zelenska. At the same time, the war in Ukraine is heating up again, with Ukrainian drones hitting a Russian airfield 300 miles inside that country’s borders and the Russians responding with a new series of devastating cruise missile attacks.
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What follows is an edited transcript of the interview with Matviichuk.
Michael Isikoff: You live in Kyiv. You posted some dramatic photos on your Twitter account showing young children floating by candlelight at night trying to complete schoolwork. Give us a sense of what it’s like to live under these Russian rocket attacks in Kyiv right now.
Oleksandra Matviichuk: It is pretty cold. i have no heat Ukrainians now cannot even plan for several hours, because you never know when the light will go away, and so will the internet connection. If you don’t have lights, you can’t plan when to go shopping or when to go to the post office or when to meet up with your partners to discuss a job because you don’t know when the air alert will go off.
The Russians are attacking the electricity grid to turn off the electricity to the citizens. How worried are you about enduring a potentially harsh winter?
It’s going to be a difficult winter. But I’m thinking about how the civilized world has to react to this. Because now we are reaching a point where the Russians publicly discussed on Russian television how better to liquidate all civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and freeze millions of Ukrainians in the winter. I will remind you that any attack on a civilian object is a war crime. And now Russia was publicly discussing how they would make these war crimes better. So they really believe they can do whatever they want. And this is dangerous not only for Ukrainians. Such behavior is dangerous for the whole world.
What message do you have for the West right now?
For decades, Russia has systematically violated its own human rights obligations. But the civilized world continued to do business with Russia as before. They closed their eyes while Russia liquidated its own civil society. You closed your eyes while Russia committed decades of war crimes in Chechnya, Moldova, Georgia, Mali, Syria and other countries around the world. And all this hell we are now facing in Ukraine is the result of the total impunity that Russia has enjoyed for decades.
I assume that’s the message you’re going to convey when you accept the Nobel Prize next week?
I will definitely mention the importance of human rights for peace in the world. But there is also the second part, because there is an illusion to believe that if he achieves something, Putin will stop. Putin will not stop until he is stopped. And that means that we must confront Putin together and resist. Because if we can’t stop Putin in Ukraine, he will go further.
One message you have is that Ukraine needs more weapons from the West. And you kept saying that: “We really need weapons. We need fighter jets. We need air defense systems to protect the Ukrainian skies.” Do you have a specific checklist of weapons you want the United States and other NATO countries to supply to Ukraine that they are currently not supplying?
I’m not a military expert and that’s not my area of expertise. But I know that Ukraine is still not getting the weapons we need. I have an example that I mentioned during the awards ceremony at Georgetown University. I have a girlfriend in Andriana Susak. She is a brave woman. She had ended her commercial career in 2014 and joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces when the war started. When the full-scale invasion began, she abandoned her 6-year-old son and continued to fight for his peaceful future. And she was among the Ukrainian defenders who freed people who took part in the fight for her son. She briefed me on Russian atrocities and the needs of the Ukrainian army to stop them. She asked for armored vehicles because she witnessed many accidents when Ukrainian military used civilian cars because they don’t have armored vehicles. And they were detonated on mines.
A few days ago her car was exploded. And now doctors are fighting for the life of my friend Andriana Susak. So this is not a theoretical discussion. It’s a real discussion. We need military support to save the lives of Ukrainians, defenders.
You will receive the Nobel Peace Prize next week. Some might say it’s a bit strange for a Nobel Peace Prize winner to talk about trying to get more weapons of war. At first glance, this seems to be a contradiction.
I can understand that. It’s a really strange situation. And I’m angry that I’m in a situation where I don’t have a legal tool to stop the Russian atrocities. For example, if the whole UN system can’t do anything with it. It is wrong for a human rights lawyer to say that only guns can save the lives of people in the occupied territories. It’s a very dangerous world to live in. But right now it’s true. We don’t just have to solve crimes and bring the perpetrators to justice. We must prevent new crimes from arising.
Is there no hope of diplomacy?
Putin sees civilized dialogue as a sign of weakness. This is a very important point. But the problem is that this war has the support of the majority of Russians, because Putin rules Russia not only with repression and censorship, but with a special social contract between the Kremlin elite and the Russian people. And this social contract is based on so-called Russian glory. And unfortunately, the majority of Russians see their glory in restoring the Russian Empire. This means that the Russian people will tolerate war criminals in power. But they will not tolerate loser criminals.