Oleksandra Matviichuk, Ukrainian lawyer: ‘Putin doesn’t want peace. He wants to forcefully restore the Russian Empire’

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The activist who heads the Ukrainian organization Center for Civil Liberties, which won the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, warns that ending the invasion will only be possible if the Kremlin feels that ‘the price of continuing the war is higher than the price of stopping it’.

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Oleksandra Matviichuk: It’s not just about Ukraine. Russia is an empire. An empire has a center, but it has no borders. An empire is always trying to expand. These aren’t my words. They are Vladimir Putin’s, who claimed that the borders of the Russian Federation “never end.” And I’ve seen it even in my human rights work. When I interviewed people who survived Russian captivity, they told me that Russians see their future like this: first we will occupy Ukraine, and then, together with you, we will go on to conquer other countries. Putin sees Ukraine as a bridge to attack the next European country. His logic is historical. He dreams about his legacy. He wants to forcibly restore the Russian Empire because the collapse of the Soviet Union was, to quote him, “the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the past century.” So he wants revenge. And this means that people in the European Union are safe only because the Ukrainians are still resisting and not allowing the Russian army to advance and attack the next country.

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The European Union leadership is behaving as if they have time. As if they have several years before Russia starts attacking. But Putin isn’t stupid. Why do they think he’ll give them several years to prepare and not attack now?

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The European Union must take decisive action. Such as creating a special tribunal on aggression, using frozen Russian assets for self-defense and the reconstruction of Ukraine. And also helping Ukraine close its airspace. I literally don’t understand what the problem is with shooting down a piece of metal that costs €1,000 [$1,160]. I’m referring to a Russian drone. It’s not an airplane with a pilot, just a piece of metal. Russia sends hundreds and hundreds of drones every day to destroy Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. And they succeed, because now we have lost the vast majority of the energy infrastructure in Ukraine, which poses a real threat to millions of people who could face winter without heating, without water, without energy, without electricity. It’s a vital problem because you can’t even warm milk for a newborn.

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I was furious [because of the recent anti-corruption investigation in Ukraine that forced the resignation of the president’s chief of staff]. Furious, like millions of people in Ukraine, for an obvious reason: we all donate a lot. We donate to the Ukrainian army, to the wounded, to people who lost everything in this war, to the victims of Russian war crimes. Ukrainian pensioners give the last of their pensions as donations.

But when we look at the situation from a pragmatic point of view, first, this corruption scandal has happened not because of a journalistic investigation, but because of an official investigation by state anti-corruption agencies, which shows that these official anti-corruption agencies are working effectively. Just 12 years ago, this was unthinkable.

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So yes, we are not perfect. We have a lot of problems that we take seriously. It is our responsibility. But we are still a democracy. A democracy in transition, and we are on the right track.